Sunday 29 March 2015

Bon Voyage to The Coast

Following our stay in Monterey, we headed south and into the valley whose spring plantings were pushing up green.  We drove the El Camino Real, a historic highway originally used as a route between the missions from Mexico to San Diego and San Francisco.  Before standardized road signs were installed along “The King’s Highway”, standards shaped like the Franciscan walking stick and a bell representing the bell at Mission San Luis de Ray marked the trail.  Originally there were four hundred and fifty bells but today there are only a few originals and many reproductions.  We drove in through wine country where there are over one hundred sixty thriving wineries.  The miles of vines crisscrossed the hills creating various geometric patterns and tiny leaves were beginning to appear.  We stayed at Vines RV Resort, a great spot just outside of the cute town of Paso Robles.  One of our day trips to the coast was the Hearst Castle tour, covered in the last blog.

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On every trip to and from the coast, we enjoyed the spectacular shadescapes across the brilliant green hills and the glimpses out to the Pacific.  Another day trip took us to San Louis Obisbo.  The town is a gorgeous combination of restored architectural gems, treed boulevards, shops, galleries, restaurants and lovely homes whose gardens burst with Citrus Trees, Palms, Italian Cypress, Cacti and masses of Bougainvillea.  We had an average lunch at an award winning Bar-B-Que restaurant and wondered if the acclaim had been purchased by the owners.  The Mission San Louis Obispo was tranquil inside its basic basilica and meditative in its gardens.  Sadly, we were too exhausted to do any wine tasting around town or Paso Robles but we will put it on the list for our next visit.

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We headed West through more rich valley country, past the craziest conglomeration of oil rigs we’ve ever seen and a number of windmills and turbines gracing the rocky hills.  During our two weeks on the coast the wildflowers had bloomed and poured down the hillsides in yellow, orange and purple.  The flowering trees were finished and their blossoms covered the ground like snow.   Trains constantly pass on each side of the highway usually with three or four engines pulling the load.   A gas station along the highway boasted its being the last place James Dean stopped to fill up with gas before he crashed his car and died.  We saw the last of bright green vegetation as we entered The Mojave Desert where we would stay for the next two weeks.

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Saturday 14 March 2015

Hearst Castle, San Simeon

Everyone has spent a few hours working hard on a personal project.  It likely involved a combination of hard work, frustration, joy and pride.  If something bad happened before you got to share that project with someone else, a deep disappointment likely occurred.   Well, I just lost sixteen paragraphs for my current blog post, certainly nothing important to anyone else but me.   My writing has disappeared about ten times in my  four years of blogging and I always “got right back on the horse” and rewrote the post.   This time however, I will tell this story with images only. 

William Randolph Hearst had a number of frustrations while he built his “Casa Grande” 1600 feet above the sparkling Pacific between 1919-1947.  With the relentless help of his amazing architect Julia Morgan and great piles of cash amassed through his publishing and film business’s he created an incredible property rimmed with terraces, gardens, 3 cottages, pools and the Castle itself.  Eventually his overspending on fine art and entertaining lead him to bankruptcy and some areas of the property were never completed.  Today, most of the grounds can be self-toured but it is worth the extra ticket price to enter some of the buildings.

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Our drive back to Paso Robles was incredible.

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