Home again

It seems inevitable that when we approach the end of our trip that the blog gets pushed to one side, perhaps I don't like writing about endings, or perhaps we are too busy with unnoteworthy mundane things like packing up for it to be a priority.
However, we are now home so this piece is a retrospective of the last three weeks.
We left San Juan Bautiste to drive to our friends Jan and Pete near Merced and are so grateful to them for storing our trailer on their mule field. We had a very pleasant week with them cleaning and preparing the rig for what promises to be a long hot summer.
We said our farewells to Pete and Jan and traveled to San Leandro to stay with our other friends Rich and Debra who live close to our exit airport. We had a great time with them. We visited their church, which was very interesting, we also had a Japanese Hana meal for the first time, also very interesting. Not to mention another trip to the Ice Cream Parlor. We had the time to take a couple of side trips to Oakland which were fun as well.
All to soon we were flying out to take a short break in Florida on the way home. We were again going to Connie and Jim's Bluegrass Party. This again was a marvelous event, made more amazing because of the health problems that have beset the Harper Household in the last year. Thank you to you both for your love and hospitality. From there we visited with our friends Jim and Kathy at their lovely home tucked away on a bend of the Santa Fe River. Here I fulfilled a life long ambition and got to drive a lawn tractor. Then on to Istachatta to visit with Marilee, where we took a side trip back to Homassassa Springs S.P. to see manatee again. We had a very nice day there. From Istachatta we drove to Orlando airport and flew home on a very uneventful journey (thankfully).
So ends Trip 10 to the Southern California Coast.

Closure for Vertigo

So we have now reached closure point for following the Hitchock film ‘Vertigo’, because today we drove through the little town of San Juan Bautista, just 30 miles from Monterey.
It is a charming town which was left behind in 1869 when the railway went to Hollister rather than to San Juan Bautiste.
What it does have is a beautiful Mission, which forms one side of the town square, with the best hotel (Plaza Hotel) on another side and the Non- City hall/Courtroom facing the Mission. The square is now grassed over.
This area and the buildings (except the Mission) are now part of the San Juan Bautista
Historic State Park. It made a very interesting stop, where we stepped back into the Nineteenth Century for a few hours.
In truth the main event for this the square is its place in the film Vertigo.
Firstly the Mission is the building where Kim Novak threw herself from the bell tower, even though the bell tower was not there when the film was shot, as a couple of years before it had collapsed due to termites. So Hitchcock rebuilt the non-existent bell tower in the studio. However he shot them going in and out of the Mission on location.
Secondly Hitchcock filmed on location the courthouse across the square for the inquest scene. Unfortunately it was the only time the building was used as a courthouse.
The City Hall/Courthouse had been built by an ambitious entrepreneur in 1868 in anticipation of San Juan Bautiste becoming the County Town, what he didn’t take into account was that the City Fathers would turn down the offer of the North Pacific Railroad to come to San Juan Bautista for a fee of $50,000, so the railroad went to Hollister instead, it grew, it became the county town, the courthouse was never used, so the guy turned it into a house, until Hitchcock came along and turned it back into a courthouse for that one scene of Vertigo.
That film is so full of interesting stories, but I guess that now we have unraveled most of them. It was a fun day.

Monterey Aquarium

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From San Simeon we drove up the coast on Highway 1, passing along the stunning coast with its views, through Big Sur and we have now returned to Monterey, in order to fulfill our promise to ourselves to revisit the Aquarium. We first visited in 1997 with the kids, we attempted to revisit in November last year, but Sally was too ill, so we just camped in the Monterey Fairground for a week, hoping she would recover enough for us to make the visit.
However this time we arrived in good time and were set up ready to visit the Aquarium.
We set out as early as we could and managed to arrive at the Aquarium just after opening time, we decided that we would like to take the ‘Behind The Scenes’ Tour as well.
This time we were armed with a timetable of events and moved smartly to the Penguins, to see them being fed at 10.30. Cute little Blackfooted Penguins whose home, surprisingly, is Namibia in Southern Africa.
We now had to traverse the length of the Aquarium to see the fish being fed in the gigantic Open Sea Tank. This was a most amazing experience as the main act for this was the feeding of the sardine! Well in this case 20,000 of them. Most of the time they cruise unseen around the bottom of the tank, leaving the top to the tuna, sharks, sunfish, dolphin tuna (mahi Mahi). However come feeding time a handful of Krill dropped in the water brings them swarming to the surface where they swim almost as a single organism, round and round, sweeping up the food being offered. Miraculously parting into two swarms as the bigger fish swim through trying to grab one of them. The group display was amazing. So amazing that when the food was gone and they sank back out of site as quickly as they had arrived there was a spontaneous round of applause – for sardines I ask you!
From there we had a chance to visit one of our favourite areas – the Moon Jellies. They are jellyfish found in Monterey bay and with subtle background lighting they produce yet another amazing display as they appear to bioflouresc (although it is only an effect of the light) in their tanks and drift aimlessly around. It was here taht I really appreciated the amazing optical quality of the tank material, they are designed to be optically neutral, being laminated acrylic. The view was excellent, with very little distortion, great for taking pictures.
From there we went on our guided tour behind the scenes (we really pushed the boat out on this visit), this was great fun and we got a chance to see lots of fish food and water pipes, as well as looked down on the open tank tops and checked out the SCUBA divers area. Then we had time to sit on the patio and have lunch watching the wild life on Monterey Bay. There were a couple of Sae Otters swimming round and a seal also came swimming close into the shore.
We now just caught the end of the a short viewing of the Albatross, which was fascinating
From here we had a look round the shore life exhibits where we could see a lot of hsore birds, who had been rescued and could not be returned to the wild, then we explored the touchy feely exhibit, where we could pick up and touch crabs, starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and abalone. That was relly fun.
This display led us to the Octopus area, where there are two giant Octopus in separate tanks. Lo and behold just as we arrive they start to feed these giants and we see them swimming around and being very lively, it was an excellent display.
Now we got into conversation with a volunteer who kindly took us to see the Sea Horses being fed. The Sea Horses were lovely to watch, especially the Leafy Dragon Fish. While we were there the lady told us that there would be an extra Sea Otter Feeding Session, where one of the sea otters was being employed as a surrogate mother to teach an orphaned baby how to become a proper Sea Otter. That was great fun seeing them being fed and playing around in the water.
All too soon our day was complete, we had really enjoyed ourselves, but were both tired out, so we stopped at the local Chinese Restaurant for a meal. A lovely day.

Sunday is Seal day

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Just down the road from the campground is a beach which is famous as the gathering place for Elephant Seals, so we took a picnic and drove down to have a look.
At this point the road runs along by the sea and there is a car park and a wooden boardwalk to give access seals to the beach. When we got there the cr park was not quite full, but pretty busy. We joined others and walked along the boardwalk above the beach, where we could see the seals, but not interfere with them.
There were probably a hundred or so seals on the sandy beach, they were all laid out in the sun. As we stood and watched we could pick out three types, the huge bull seals, the smaller females and the much smaller baby seals. The beach is a complete community as the seals come ashore in January and stay until march. They use the beach to live on, to mate then following year to have their babies then suckle them and mate again.
We watched the elephant seals for about an hour and a half, slowly we worked out how their social system worked. The males tried to create their own harem, so the strongest males had about half a dozen females for themselves, while other younger or weaker males hung around trying to pick off one of the females and mate with her. This brought about conflict as when the owner male saw this he would heave himself across the sand to protect his females, the result being a stand off between the two males. During whic the two males would rise up on thier flippers and roar through their big noses, which would inflate horrendously. If this was ot enough to rresolve the showdown then the males could end up fighting, many mlaes had large lacerations on their bodies. If he was successful in heading off the interloper he then reinforced his dominence by mating again with the female. The more aggressive the male, the more females he has, the more he has to to do to protect his harem. The females mostly lay out in the sun feeding their pup (most had one), or being chased and taken by a male, or just sleeping. The pups either slept or bounced around looking for the mothers teat, though they didn’t seem to mind which mum, or even male they approached, though the adult did and would bark at them or push them away. It was a fascinating visit, full of drama, a bit like watching Big Brother.

Hearst Castle Calls

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Visiting Hearst Castle is akin to a military operation. We had a tour time of 11.00, we had to be there 20 minutes before and at the shuttle gate 5 minutes before boarding. The Shuttle took us up the long winding road from the visitors centre to the castle which is built onto the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. On arrival we could see that the castle was a very large building surrounded by an Italian looking landscaped garden/grounds. Since we were on the ADA tour we were placed a board an ADA golf cart and taken unceremoniously round to the back of the building, where we had our first architectural shock. The back of the building was just bare walls. I mean bare walls. The building structure was of concrete walls, which looked like they had put up a pre-stressed framework, then shuttering and filled it in with cement, when it was cured they remove the shuttering. After that they 'adorn' the building with window frames, stucco, wooden beams, door frames, architraves, guttering and whatever to make it look as it should be on the plan. Very similar process to building a bridge, however round the back it had never been finished, so you looked at a towering concrete wall, still with the marks of the shuttering, or reinforcement wires sticking out. There were however some window in place – Gothic stone arch windows for the first three floors, with Georgian windows on the top floor. Although a fancy Italian patio door and window set had been added to one portion of the wall. It was about this time that the word 'Bizarre' popped into the mind.

Hearst Castle History and Architecture
After our visit we realized that Hearst Castle architecture was its history. It was in the process of being built and rebuilt from 1920 through until 1947 when William Randolph Hearst left the place for the last time. It was a building dreamt by Hearst as a castle that could be used for him and his friends, who were the movie and incrowd, could play. Also somewhere he could show off his enormous collection of Art work.
Now for architectural style you have to think 'concept' rather than specifics. Internally Hearst had in mind grand Gothic and Renaissance Europe, so the entrance hall was French Renaissance, although it mixed 'chateaux' with 'cathedral' style, even though the grand entrance was Greek style. The room was stuffed with treasures of French art and The Grand Dining Room was Mid European Gothic castle with Monks Stalls round the walls, the  drawing room was Moorish Gothic.
However the outside is made to look like an Italian hillside, with a Moorish cathedral at its centre. It has a focal point, which is a piazza just outside the front door (you can’t get a car to it, as the piatza is up some steps). The front facade of the castle is dominated by the entrance, which is adorned by a mixture of 600 year old figures, a 400 year old Madonna and child and 300 year old stone plaques, set in cement stonework. Above is a chinese style teak roof, with the two Moorish towers on the corners. The word Bizarre came readily to mind.
It is however a total experience. Some people would say the style is eclectic, personally I think I wold call the style Macdonalds, it is the fast food of architecture – anything you want you can have, we just stick it on to the concrete walls. The gardens however were lovely, with their beautiful views down to the sea, or across to the mountains.

Birds on Pismo Beach

We have been at Pismo Beach for 2 or three days, it is a very pleasant town. The campground is pretty good by Ca SP standards, having hook ups and being by a small lake. The weather has been dominated by cold nights and windy days, the wind being cold. However when you get in the sun it is warm enough. We have tried to do as little as possible, but that gets boring. We visited the State Beach and found that you could take your car onto the beach and drive along the sand for miles, so we did. We enjoyed watching the Kite Surfers, the Dune Buggies and ATV's and the little waderbirds, which we have found out are called Sanderlings. Sanderlings are very funny to watch. They are very small, blackbird sized and run up and down the beach following waves in and out, presumably looking for food brought in on the waves. However they also stand just above the water line. As we  watched we noticed various behaviours. They stand absolutely still in tight little groups of up to 50 birds. Then we noticed that they all face exactly the same direction, into the wind (It was quite windy). Then that some of them stood on one leg, actually a lot of them stood on one leg. Then as they followed the waves, they ran on one leg (hopped)! The we saw that some groups stood in a dead straight line, which looked strange, but reduced the effect of the wind. The whole thing looked like a pelaton from the Tour De France, as every now and then the one at the front of the line ran round to the back. We then saw large groups hiding in the lee of clumps of seaweed, every now and then one or two would run from one group to another and the whole group would shuffle round to accommodate the new, or close up the space where one had left, then stillness again. It was fascinating watching the birds moving. It appeared to be a dynamic combination of a  social dance and making sure that they lost as little body heat as possible. Even the standing on one leg is a mechanism to reduce body heat loss.
On lour last day we stopped for a meal at the local diner - a real converted train. it was great fun and the food was good as well.

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Los Alamos - Lost Hotel

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Sunday

After two nights at El Capitan we have now moved another 60 miles up the coast, taking a shortcut on State Route 101. On the way we passed Los Alamos, which is a very small town south of Santa Maria. Because we had been to Los Alamos in New Mexico we detoured into the town in search of a coffee/tea. Well what a lovely little town, mostly Main Street with lots of wooden fronted shops. Right in the middle is the prize gem – The Union Hotel. Built in 1870 it was a staging post for Wells Fargo (no references to Dale Robertson could be found), it was still in almost its original condition, with a faded timber front. We went in and there was a large room with great big padded armchairs arranged round a big fire, with lots of original knick knacks. We were made most welcome as we sat by the fire with our coffee and tea. To one side was a Saloon, with proper swing doors, that had been imported from New Orleans, out back of the Saloon was a pianola, a paper roll piano. It was wonderful place, even the toilets seemed to be original, they had the same front emptying porcelain W.C that we have at home. It was a really excellent experience just sitting there reading the Sunday papers (headline being that Whitney Houston had died).

We reluctantly moved on and found our camp site at Oceano Campground State Park, one of the few on this coast with partial hook-ups, we are booked to stay here until Friday, so we are hoping to get more time to relax in the sun.

Also hope to get Internet back on tomorrow.