Travel

From Moab, Utah where we stayed while visiting Arches, we drove back north to Green River, then southwest to Torrey. We stayed here for a couple of nights while visiting Capitol Reef National Park.

I like this relatively small, relatively unvisited park. There are fewer hikes and nothing so magnificent

In the end, we drove about 2000 miles between Seattle and Scottsdale. By US standards that’s not much, but to Europeans a 3200 km trip may seem significant.

We heard that the parking lots and trails at Arches were overflowing and that the park rangers were closing the gate

We followed Highway 1 along the California coast to Half Moon Bay where we had lunch and encountered the spectacular, shortened VW bus shown above. It is so Californian!

After lunch, we continued until we approached San Francisco where we joined the larger Highway 101. After a long, slow trip

This post is just a slide show. It begins at Ragged Point at the southern end of the drive and ends at Carmel to the north.

How was it? I imagined a twisty road amidst attractive coastline. I was not disappointed. For those inclined to spend multiple days in the

The three guest houses that make up the “Spanish village” of Hearst’s imagination are like the Three Bears: small, medium and large sizes. We were able to have a look inside the largest of the three, which is where the Hearst family stays when they come to call.

Casa

If you were lucky enough to be invited to stay at the Castle, you could expect to find yourself in pretty spectacular surroundings. We saw the public rooms in the previous post, now let’s have a look at bedrooms.

Hearst never “finished” working on the Castle, and probably never

“This must be a new experience for you to see the grand home of rich people”, I said to the British family joining us on our first tour.

Hearst imagined The Enchanted Hill not as a house or even a single structure. His model was a small Spanish town with

Most folks call this monument to tasteful pillaging Hearst Castle but its given name is La Cuesta Encantada, which means The Enchanted Hill. I’m here to tell you that when you sprinkle the fairy dust of money on ranch land, you conjure up a whole boatload ‘o enchanted architecture.

Meet Rik, creator and proprietor of the Itty Bitty Inn in North Bend, Oregon. Although the motel was built in 1950, you can bet it didn’t look like this in the early days. Rik took over about 1980 and began the transformation into the whacky place you see today.