San Simeon State Park and Hearst Castle

We moved north 30 miles to San Simeon State Park, along the ocean again, and just a few miles from Hearst Castle.

160 sites in this park, and only a dozen occupied.  Dry camping - no problem for us with large holding tanks and solar panels.  So nice we don't know when we will leave.

Today we toured the Hearst Castle, a joint venture of the Hearst Foundation and the California State Parks.  Whadda place!  William Randolph Hearst, one of the wealthiest men in the world at the time, this before the Arabs got smart and raised the price of oil, spent 15 years and spared no expense building this huge estate [90,080 Square Feet in all, with 56 bedrooms] and filling it with art and antiques from around the world.  And accumulated a vast holding of 250,000 acres of ranch and coastal land.  Orson Welles classic film Citizen Kane was a fictionalization of William Randolph Hearst's career.

The tour guide said, "It's hard to take a bad picture here."  But take a quick tour with a large group, and you won't get a chance for a good one.  Here are just a few, almost all outdoors.

Bruce