Cruising the Pacific Coast Highway

It started long ago with a dream: to one day cruise the majestic Pacific Coast Highway, a journey by way of long roads winding around mountains edging the great Pacific. Breathtaking scenery lurked around every turn. Having already had a taste of the journey before when I went to Santa Barbara, I was sure great surprises would lay along the road ahead. Unfortunately as so often happens, the weather was against me. Low lying clouds and intermittent rain showers dampened the mood. Still, I enjoyed the trip for what is was: another chance to explore the unknown. 

On the way to Big Sur, we stopped in San Simeon to visit the eclectic, unfinished manor owned by media mogul William Randolph Hearst - Hearst Castle. When I was 12, I visited Biltmore Estate in North Carolina leading me to conclude surely nothing could be more elaborate than that in the US. Boy, was I wrong…

A bus from the visitor center shuttles us up the long, winding road across yellow covered grass hills to the castle while a brief history of the estate sounded over the speakers. The estancia was bought by Hearst's father as a cattle ranch which led to the family's early wealth (relatively speaking). William liked coming back as a young man, and when his father died he inherited it. He didn't actually have plans to build a home there until later in life - hence the reason it was never fully completed. He famously told his architect, "I am too old to be sleeping in a tent. I just want a little something comfortable."

Guest Bedroom

Our guides took us through several bedrooms, sitting rooms, and the private rooms belonging to Mr. Hearst and his live-in mistress. He spared no expense in acquiring the finest materials from all over the world to decorate his home; Beams from a medieval church in Italy, hand painted wooden ceilings from France, marble fireplaces from Germany. He often purchased whole rooms that were disassembled and shipped to the house where a room specifically designed to accommodate them was ready to be finished.

The different styles were all fused together making no two rooms alike. As Frasier Krane once said, "If everything is a masterpiece, they will all fit well together." In fact, Hearst Castle is such a prime example of eclecticism that Leonardo di Caprio toured the home to help develop his role as Jay Gatsby. 

The Study

Hearst surprisingly did not have a big bedroom, instead opting for two small ones on either side of a larger sitting room. Each had its own private bath and was secluded from the rest of the house. He kept them small to spur more interaction in the social rooms with guests. More over, the house was really built for his mistress, an actress, to entertain her and all her Hollywood friends. Hearst was more than happy to spend 16 hour days working in his study, overseeing his vast media empire. When Mickey Rooney - a former guest - toured the castle a few years ago, the guide surprised him with a visit to the two-story room he would frequently stay in during his visits in the 1940s.

The Library

Once downstairs, we entered in the great room; my eyes were immediately drawn to the ornate hand carved ceiling rising 40 feet above the floor. The perimeter was lined with hand carved seats found in a medieval monastery. Tapestries from all over Europe draped gracefully over the walls and a massive marble fireplace fit for Julius Cesar stood in the middle. Plush club chairs and sofas filled the room, the gathering place for guests to enjoy games, cocktails, and conversation before proceeding into the great hall for supper. 

Great room fireplace

The Great Hall was designed to look like a gothic cathedral with huge arched windows. Surprisingly, though it was a formal dining room, formal dinners rarely took place. Condiments were left out on the table and there would only be one set of silverware. Meals were almost always basic, sometimes as simple as hamburgers or hotdogs. The point, as Hearst saw it, was to let people feel relaxed and more at home. 

Back outside, we walked around the verandas of the main house, down red brick pathways connecting the three guesthouses. Most of us think of guesthouse as a bedroom/bathroom combo, maybe a sitting area included. Hearst's guesthouse were 'houses for guests' - big houses. The smallest guesthouse is 2,500 sq ft.; the largest is 5,350 sq ft. Of course, these pale in comparison to the main home's 38 bedrooms covering a whopping 68,500 sq ft.!

Casa del Sol (middle guesthouse) 

The piece de resistance of the estate is without a doubt the Neptune Pool. Modeled after a Roman temple, the pool is the epitome of luxurious antiquity. 350,000 gallons, tall stone columns, and handmade mosaic tile floors probably fueled the USSR's vision of the "decadent" west. Due to the severe drought in California combined with intermittent leaks, the pool was drained until repairs could be finalized - rightfully so since they lose on average 3,000 gallons a day in summer. 

What we saw...

What we WISH we saw...

And when temperatures were a bit too nippy for swimming in the outdoor pool, Hearst built an equally lavish indoor pool opposite the main house.

From Hearst Castle, we continued another seventy miles to the campsite where the kids older half-brother had set up our tents near Big Sur. The campground was under a bridge in a small valley right on the ocean. A few cars passed over us from time to time, but all in all it was quite serene. We took a short walk over to the beach, our eyes fixated on the horizon hoping to catch a glimpse of the sunset - to no avail. 

Beachfront camp site

In the morning we all went for a hike through the mist filled coastal redwood forest, crisscrossing a trickling creek leading up to a hidden waterfall. I was excited to get such a break from siting down until I came across a sign warning of snakes, bears, and poison oak in the vicinity. Of the three, I'd take the bear since I was fairly confident I could at least out run the kids. 

The gloomy weather finally gave way for the highlight of my journey - passing the middle of Big Sur. Admittedly it was the only time I truly wanted there to be blue skies and sunshine, to showcase the azure water crashing on the rocky shores. On approach it looked as if the heavens had opened up just around Big Sur to make it perfect just for me. Reveling in the moment, I consciously ticked off yet another awe-inspiring experience, filing it away in my vault of memories. 

Big Sur