Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Happy St. Patty’s Day!  We are still camped El Chorro Regional Park near Morro Bay, California.  Today was errand day – post office, lunch, groceries and diesel in San Luis Obispo.  San Luis Obispo is the home of California Polytechnic State University, usually referred to as Cal Poly.

Yesterday, we visited Hearst Castle, built by William Randolph Hearst who built a publishing empire, which still exists today.  The Castle itself was turned over to the state as a museum after his death. 

When Hearst’s mother died in 1919, he inherited this land, which he always loved.  He had grown up on the cattle ranch here, with lots of trips around the rest of the world.  His father had made his fortune in mining ores and invested in California real estate – cattle ranches.  He owned 100’s of square miles in this area and the Hearst family still raises cattle here. The family home was at the foot of the hill, but their favorite camping site was here where Hearst Castle is.  (Hearst always called it the Ranch.)  Shortly after his mother’s death, he started building.

Did he go to a local contractor and ask for a small cabin?  No, he hired Julia Morgan, one of the first women architects and a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Hearst Castle is the result.

Julia Morgan built many buildings in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and earthquake resistance was a priority for both Hearst and Morgan.  The buildings are built of heavily reinforced concrete and withstood a 6.5 earthquake in 2003.  No structural damage was found.  Several pots broke but have been repaired.  Both tour guides mentioned how little damage was done.

Julia Morgan must have been quite a lady.   She worked with Hearst for 28 years building, tearing out and rebuilding the castle.  And finished over 700 other projects.  The castle is still unfinished.  Check the tower on the far right in the picture above.  The finish layer on the outside hasn’t been done.  In 1947, Hearst’s doctors ordered him to move to Los Angeles for medical care. Although Hearst lived another 4 years, work stopped shortly after his move.  One of the conditions of the gift to the state was that it remain as Hearst left it.

Hearst had fun here.  He invited many people to visit and wanted to make sure they had fun.  Horseback riding, hiking, checking out his private zoo, tennis, pool, snooker, cards and board games were all available.  As were two swimming pools – the outdoor pool, which is undergoing repairs:

And the indoor pool (my favorite):

Hearst was an avid collector.  There are over 20,000 museum quality objects in the house and that was about a tenth of his collection.  The objects include not only statues and pottery, but books, rugs, walls, ceilings, tapestry, paintings, mosaics, anything you might see in a museum.

The guide said that they no longer take people through the front door because it opens on a roman mosaic floor.  Apparently they hadn’t realized it’s age until some work was done on it a few years ago.  This is the front door.

But while the castle was filled with priceless antiques, Hearst wanted it to be a casual place.  Here’s the table set for lunch (sorry the picture is out of focus), but you can see the ketchup and mustard on the table with the paper napkins.  The guide said the glasses and silverware were commonly available in any store, although you still had to worry about picking up the wrong fork.

But what made this place so special were the views.  To the west of course is the ocean.

And to the east, the hills of the ranch, which extends as far as you can see.

And yes, that’s a lemon.  Here at the castle, spring was in full force and the smell was heavenly.

Some of the bedrooms had views in both directions, but Hearst’s room had the sea view.

It’s a lovely place and well worth the visit.

Deb

Sunday, March 15, 2015

We are camped El Chorro Regional Park near Morro Bay, California.  Here’s the view out our back window:

I didn’t show you our view at Anaheim.  The back view wasn’t much:

But out our side window, you could see the Matterhorn at Disneyland (in the center of the picture).

We really enjoyed this park.  They had a nice laundry and a neighbor who was a professional dog sitter.  She took great care of Obi so we could spend two days at Disneyland.  The park also had a preferred rig washing company, so the truck and trailer got a good scrubbing.

There was a shuttle to the parks, which was about $5 a day, much less than parking and ran every 20 minutes.  Just about as good as at Disney World.

We had a day of catching up on chores, 2 days at Disney and then we went to see a Frank Lloyd Wright house, Hollyhock House.  They’ve recently restored part of the house and that’s open for the first time in years.  We enjoyed it, but only were able to see the dining room, living room and library.  One guest did note that all of the books in the library were easily reached.  I hadn’t thought about that, but a lot of libraries have a lot of shelves that are hard to reach.

Steve and I hadn’t been to Disneyland since 2001, when Purdue lost the Rose Bowl.  Steve had managed to see California Adventure at some point.   I don’t remember much about our last trip and was amazed to see the differences.

Much is the same, but for example, in the Small World ride, there are Disney characters.  The first one I spotted was Peter Pan, with Tinkerbelle nearby.  I spotted him because he was “flying”.  Next I spotted Cinderella, with some mice.  Now Cinderella and Peter Pan were the normal Small World dolls in appropriate dress, but Tinkerbelle and the mice were different.  Aladdin and Jasmine were on a flying carpet and Woody and Jessie were in a Wild West segment. 

And Ariel had her own scene:

The castle at Disneyland is much smaller than the one at Disney World:

But the outstanding event was the Aladdin Show at California adventure.  I assumed this would be similar to the 15 minute Beauty and the Beast show at Walt Disney World, but I was wrong.  It was an hour long, Broadway worthy production including an elephant and flying carpets.  I only got a picture of the elephant.

We loved the show, even though it made Steve miss his fast pass to Tower of Terror.  (He was able to get another.)  Disney has a Broadway show of Aladdin and if history repeats itself, the Broadway version will be even better.  Maybe they’ll bring it to Chicago, but the flying carpet will be hard to duplicate in most theaters.  (Just a note:  We’ve seen both Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King on stage and they are excellent.  If you get a chance to see them, take it.)

We hung around Morrow Bay today and this was my lunch view:

We had lunch with an old friend from Purdue, Tom Tengdin.  He lives near Morrow Bay and had noticed on a ham radio site that Steve was nearby.  He emailed and we were able to meet up with him.  It was great to see him again.

We’re headed for Hearst Castle tomorrow, so I need to head for bed so we can get an early start.

Deb

Friday, March 13, 2015

We are in Anaheim, California.  And, yes, that’s where Disneyland is.  It’s also where summer is.  It’s 90 out right now (2 pm), on it’s way to a high of 93.  It’s actually been a nice week this week in the 70’s and 80’s.  Today’s a quiet day for us, so I’m holed up in the air conditioning and Steve’s off at the Apple store trying to get his computer fixed.  It keeps giving him problems with his mail application.

But we have a nice spot in a nice park.

Obi and I spent some time this morning lying out on the grass.  Since he’s gone blind, he loves laying outside, enjoying the sun and smells.  But eventually it got too hot for him and he barked to go in.

When I last wrote, we were in Death Valley.  We went to Scotty’s Castle the next day.  It’s an amazing place with an amazing story.  It’s a rich man’s retreat in a desolate place. 

Scotty was Walter Scott, who never actually owned the villa.  Scotty had traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, did some prospecting and was a great con man. One of his cons was selling shares in a non-existent gold mine.  Albert Johnson was one of his investors.  He ran a family company in Chicago, but had trained as a civil and mining engineer at Cornell.  He demanded to visit the mine and Scotty planned an elaborate charade, including a shootout, to keep him from finding out the truth.  The plan collapsed when someone got shot (not seriously) and Scotty confessed all.  Johnson was furious and headed home.  Later, he realized he hadn’t had that much fun in years and got back in touch with Scotty.  The two of them became fast friends and explored and camped in Death Valley.  Johnson’s wife eventually wanted to come, too, so Johnson decided to build her something comfortable to stay in, starting in 1922.  The site they chose was close to a prolific spring.

One of our guides called it the ultimate unfinished home improvement project and I think he’s not far from right.  This is a project that grew from having a reasonably comfortable place to stay, to an estate, with servants quarters and guest houses.  Johnson was an engineer and he kept tinkering and adding.  He powered the house with water from the spring, which worked fine until he decided he needed a pipe organ, which took more power, so he installed a generator.  And of course he had build something to house the organ and a power house for the generator.  Since no one at the estate played the organ, he had a player machine that played both the organ and grand piano on rolls like a player piano.

So Johnson had a great time building the villa, but perhaps he had the most fun listening to Scotty’s tall tales.  People would come to visit and Scotty would sit in the living room, introducing Johnson as his banker, and tell the stories of finding his gold mine and building his castle.  Johnson loved seeing everyone believe the tale and the villa became known as Scotty’s Castle.  The National Park Service now owns the castle and runs the tours.

Inner courtyard and original front of the castle:

The Johnson’s obviously had money and paid attention to detail.  The texture on the outside walls had to have been time consuming:

And it was repeated as additions were made, so it all looks as if it were built as one.

Here’s a bridge between the main house and one guest house, which was where the organ is also housed. 

The fireplace in the great hall:

There was exquisite tile work and iron work everywhere.

The pool in front of the house was never finished, but they had tile to use if they ever decided on a design.  This is half of the pool from the bridge crossing the middle:

And this is the some of the tile in the basement:

After we left Scotty’s Castle we headed for a place in Death Valley called Artist Pallet.  I didn’t know what to expect but here’s a picture:

This picture doesn’t do the colors justice.  These are real rock colors.  They were sherbet colors.  Pink, orange, violet, green, vanilla.  Totally amazing.

We’re headed out tomorrow, so itb’s time to start packing up.  Hopefully I’ll be able to blog again soon.

Deb