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| Hearst Castle |
Today
was the first day of the second half of our 40-day trip and tomorrow we actually
start driving east for the first time. The second half is going to be somewhat
longer in distance as we head south for a good bit of the trip as well.
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| View of the Pacific from Hearst Castle |
We
started the day with a tour of Hearst Castle, which was built by William
Randolph Hearst over about a 30-year period starting in 1919. It is a spectacularly
beautiful home with 56 bedrooms high in the hills above San Simeon, CA. Hearst was
probably the first media mogul with his publishing and film companies. Hearst was fond of mixing with famous and
powerful people and, in its heyday, the castle was host to the who’s who in film,
sports and politics with names such as Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Winston
Churchill, etc. spending weekends at the castle.
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| Main Meeting Room In Hearst Castle |
It
is kind of hard to describe the meticulous details that went into the design of
the castle. Hearst was an avid collector of European art and incorporated much
of the art that he had purchased into his home. The main building is designed
to resemble a Spanish cathedral and it uses statues from the 14th century
in the front facade along with a Roman mosaic in the entrance way and intricate
carved wooden ceilings.
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| View of Channel Islands from Visitor Center |
From
Hearst Castle, we drove down the Pacific Coast to Ventura, CA, for about three
hours to visit the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center. This is an
interesting National Park because unlike the other parks, the main purpose is
to preserve the five Channel Islands and the surrounding waters and hence it
isn’t particularly visitor friendly. You can take a boat out to the individual
islands, but it takes a full day and there are no facilities on the island.
They are mostly visited by scuba divers, kayakers and campers. Since we didn’t
have the equipment or desire for any of those activities, we limited our visit
to the Visitor Center.
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