Categories
California

San Simeon, Big Sur, and the Hearst Castle

This morning, we headed out of Monterey on the Pacific Coast Highway. When we started in the morning, the coast was mostly covered in fog–very usual in California. As the day went on, the fog lifted and we had panoramic views of the coast and the mountains. We stopped for pictures at many of the turnouts along the road. One of the highlights of this part of the trip was seeing the male elephant seals on the beach molting.

Off of the Pacific Coast Highway, we stopped in Julia Pfeiffer Burns park, which is part of an area known as Big Sur. In this area, we hiked down McWay Waterfall trail. The 80′ waterfall flows into a scenic bay.

In the afternoon, we toured the Hearst Castle. The castle was built by W. R. Hearst starting in 1919 on land that he camped on as a young boy. Mr. Hearst became very wealthy as a newspaper owner around the turn of the century. When he inherited the land, he started construction on a bungalow within weeks. This bungalow grew into a village with three large guest houses, the smallest which is 2500 square feet and a main house of 60,000 square feet by the time of his death in 1951. Today, the house is a state park. We took a guided tour of the middle size guest house and the public areas of the main house (main parlor, dining room, game room, movie theater, and both swimming pools).

This evening, we’re staying in San Simeon, a small town on the pacific. Tomorrow morning, we’re leaving for the five hour drive to LA.