Michael and Kaylyn's Adventures

22 March 2006

The Sights And Sounds Of Highway 1

Most of our many-moon was spent driving along the California coast south of Monterey. We kicked things off by taking the Seventeen Mile Loop, one of those trade-money-for-all-the-pretty-views drives. Then we moved onto Highway 1, one of those trade-your-sanity-for-all-the-pretty-views drives. Highway 1 is directly on the edge of California (i.e., the road's shoulder is the Pacific Ocean), where the mountains are diving into the ocean. This makes for a very twisty road! Our average speed: twenty miles an hour. But hoo boy the views!

This is Cypress Point.

You might recognize Big Sur.

This tree has gained fame as The Lone Cypress. (Hiyo Pine Cone, away!)

This tree isn't famous but it's still cool.

Here's Kaylyn at the Natural Bridges State Park in Santa Cruz.

And the two of us at the entrance to Pebble Beach. (The bouncers wouldn't let us in. Maybe it was Michael's braids.)

This boccie court has a grand view.

Sprinkled along Highway 1 are these little "towns" that are nothing more than a resort (i.e., a small hotel built in the 1960s) and a post office. Here's the view from the one where we stayed. Why bother with the TV when you can watch all that, we want to know!

Hearst Castle

You might've heard of William Randolph Hearst, given that he owned tons of newspapers and all sorts of other things. He also loved to collect - doors and windows and floors and ceilings and archways and sculptures and stuff. People usually like to display their collection, and Hearst was no different. So he built himself a castle.

We first got a sense of how large Hearst Castle was when we saw it from San Simeon, a tiny town some six miles away. That's it up there on the hilltop. Here, we'll zoom in on it for you:

Hearst started planning his house-on-a-hilltop in 1919. His initial instructions to his architect Julia Morgan were that "I would like to build a little something."

Hearst really only wanted two things out of his home: first, a place to entertain people, and second, a place to display his collection of doors and windows and floors and ceilings and stuff he had purchased from all over Europe. (Some might say stolen or plundered, but hey - it was a different time back then. And he *was* crazy rich.) Construction was continuous from 1919 until 1947 (when Hearst left his Castle for what was destined to be the last time), and so some portions are completely finished while other areas have raw concrete walls and there's an entire wing that never made it past the pour-the-concrete stage. The Castle is nothing more than a series of concrete boxes, with doors and windows sized to fit whatever piece Hearst had decided to put there. (But ceilings were cut to fit the rooms. Go figure.) It was all so overwhelming we forgot to take pictures!

Guest houses were just more rooms to fill with priceless antiquities. Each guest house is larger than our entire condo!

The Weather Isn't The Only Reason

Back when we still listened to the radio, there were a series of commercials that said California cows were happier (than Wisconsin cows, presumably) because of all the sun. On our many-moon down the California coast we discovered that the weather isn't the only reason California cows are happier - they have a pretty nice view too!