Climb 1,730
We had less climbing today, but the highest hill so far to get over. I think it would be a stretch to call it a mountain, but it was at about 1,000 ft. The grade of the hill was pretty good, however. It just takes awhile at 4 to 5 mph to get up it. The "predominantly" north winds have been helping us along these last two days, which has been so nice. In fact this afternoon on some pretty flat terrain, I was moving along at 20 mph, which was great.
The first part of the day, we had pretty much the same story as yesterday. We just rode along the pacific coast, with its ups and downs, etc. I will try and explain what is really great about riding a bicycle down the coast. We are riding south and being a bicyclist, we ride over on the very left of the road. That gives us a great view of the ocean as we ride and most of the time, I can hear the waves crashing into the rocks and crashing into the rocks creates a little mist that you can smell the salt and the ocean. It's like three of your senses are just having a great time.
Also along today's route, we were able to stop at a beach in which elephant seals come and spend time on the beach. Apparently, this time of the year the juveniles come, so they don't have the long noses that the adults will have. In December and January the adults arrive to have their pups and mate. That would be a great time to see them. I was told that when any of them arrive, they are not feeding, so they just spend all their time on the beach and actually lose quite a bit of their weight.
They get up on the beach and flip sand on to themselves for sun screen protection.
We also had a chance to tour the Hearst mansion in San Simeon. That was quite a place. William Randolf Hearst, built the "castle" starting in 1919 and it was in some form of construction until 1947. It is known for its Mediteranian, and Spanish revival architecture. To me, it seems crazy that someone would build something like that. They say he liked to collect ceilings, so many of the ceilings were imported in from around the world and were very old. The castle combined is more than 90,000 square feet and the swimming pool cost about $7,000,000 in today's money.
His father ended up giving William a sizable inheritance made mostly from silver mining in Nevada and of course William Randolph made even more in his media ventures.
The $7M pool being renovated. It leaked too much water.
These were imported from Egypt and are 3,500 years old. You can see the old stone that is darker and the underlying structure was built to portray them.
The inside pool.
He ended up giving the castle to the State of California in the 1950's and has retained a right to still use the property whenever he likes. Some of it is not available to the public and the family still uses it.
We are staying in a campground tonight that is in an area in which the County leaders have made a law because of the water shortage that public entities are not able to use water for bathroom facilities and showers and such. So had to do without a shower tonight. Even at the Hearst Castle, the inside bathrooms were closed and porta potties were outside. The bathrooms here are locked up and porta potties are to used. Crazy! Like campers are using all the water??? Had a nice dinner of chicken frittatas tonight. Goodnight.
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