CENTRAL COAST, CA February 2 - 4

SUPER SUNDAY
Super Bowl Sunday we left Bakersfield and drove to the west coast.  As we left the desert and entered the coastal range, it started to rain.  After getting set up at Hearst San Simeon State Park where we would be roughing it for the next few days with no electric, water, or sewer hook-ups, we headed into Cambria in search of a bar with a TV to watch the Super Bowl.

"Raindrops keep falling on my head."  Three inches of rain fell by Monday morning.

YEAH!  Seattle won!

A MAN'S HOME IS HIS CASTLE
Monday we toured part of the amazing Hearst Castle.  Casa Grande is the main house with a whopping 68,500 square feet containing 115 rooms including 38 bedrooms, a library, movie theater, kitchen and living quarters for the household staff.  We saw a very small portion of the house on our 1 hour tour.  William Randolph Hearst was a movie, newspaper and magazine mogul (aka media mogul) and inherited this land from his wealthy parents.  In 1919 he hired a woman architect, Julia Morgan, (which was very rare for the times) to design a little ranch house on the hilltop where Hearst often camped in tents.  With Hearst's dreams and blank check, and Morgan's talent and eye for detail, they collaborated on building the massive estate on the hilltop with expansive views of the coastal mountains and Pacific Ocean. The property is furnished with many priceless museum quality pieces of art obtained by Hearst between 1919 and 1947.  When doctors told him he was no longer able to go the the "ranch" at San Simeon, Hearst gifted items to family members, as well as selling and donating other art pieces to museums.

The little ranch house at the top of the hill.

The ceiling in the living room was recycled from a "tear down" castle in Europe.
The antique tapestries hanging on the walls are priceless.

The Neptune pool is losing water because of a leak.  It isn't being refilled because of the severe drought .

Standing in front of Casa Grande. 

Admiring more art work.

The indoor Roman pool.

THE NATURE CHANNEL - LIVE!
The beach along Highway 1, just north of our campground, is the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery.  We stopped at the viewing area above the beach where thousands of these huge mammals arrive every January and February to give birth and breed.  We walked along the walkway, just feet from the sights, sounds, and smells of these unusual creatures doing what they do.  The adult males were bellowing and getting into bloody fights with each other over dominance for part of the beach where the harem of females nursed their babies and squawked their annoyance when a male picked her out as his next love interest.  The males are massive and look unusual because they have a proboscis (long nose that looks kind of like an elephant's trunk).  An adult male will weigh as much as 5,000 pounds;  and the females can grow to 1,800 pounds.  At birth the pups weigh 60 - 80 pounds and can weigh 250 to 350 pounds when they are weaned just 28 days after being born.

Front right of the photo are 2 adult males fighting it out for the ladies.  One of them ended up with a bloody neck.