Carmel/Hearst Castle

Friday, September 28, 2007 - After work today I drove around Carmel and Monterey a little bit. My dad had mentioned that Clint Eastwood owned a bar/restaurant in Carmel called "Hog's Breath Inn", so I walked around Carmel until I found that. Carmel is very cool, it's very Dutch (I think). Talked with a couple guys at the bar that were bicycling about 20 miles or so about my travels. Pretty nice people.

Afterwards I headed out for Pfeiffer Big Sur - a redwood forest campground in the Big Sur area, just off the coast of highway 1. Lots of people here, but the nature and hiking trails were pretty incredible. Giant redwood trees that I hadn't seen since I was here about 20 years ago.

Saturday I headed to Hearst Castle in San Simeon, about an hour south of my campground. Hearst Castle was built by the author William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. Apparently he camped in the area as a kid, and wanted to simply build a small ranch for his family to camp out at. Well this turned into an immaculate "Castle" (which he never called it) of immense proportions. It became so renown that basically every person of importance in his era stayed at one of the guest houses at the castle - Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Calvin Coolidge, Cary Grant, you name them, they were there. The total square footage of the castle and all guest houses exceeds 90,000 sq ft. Unbelievable.

A beach full of Elephant Seals scratching themselves.	Pool at Hearst Castle
Hearst	The main "house" at Hearst Castle
Egyptian statues Mr. Hearst had imported - these are somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 years old	Detail on the bottom portion of the main house
If you look close, this floor is thousands of tiny tiles imported from Rome - these tiles were used as a floor about 2,000 years ago	Hearst's indoor pool, located underneath his tennis courts