Day 33 Hearst Castle

Left the campsite this morning and first thing we saw was the Hawk on the sign. We went on to visit Hearst Castle. It was an amazing and fantastic tour. The tour lasted 1 hour and 15 min. Then there was a 30 min. movie. They have 4 different tours of the castle. They cost $20 each. We just took tour 1. Took about a 100 pictures, here is a small sample. We left the castle about 2 pm and headed east after having about enough of the coast. We are staying at a campground in Bakersfield, CA tonight.

D32 Big Sur area

I took a walk down the beach to look and take pictures of the old cement ship that was at the end of the pier. It was about a 100 ft. long. We left our beautiful beach front campsite and continued on down the coast on highway 1. From Monterey CA. to San Simeon the scenery is fantastic. We seen beautiful vistas around every bend in the road. We came to another area along the coast where there were hundreds of sea lions. and later we seen 9 California Condors at the same time. When we got to San Simeon there was hundreds of Elephant seals in the water and laying on the beach. We got a campsite at San Simeon State Park. This one did have pay showers, but no electric.


Elephant Seals





Sea Lions (Try to count them, don't count rocks)




Ocean vista



California Condors



Historic Bixby bridge (built 1932)

Day 31 Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

We left China camp state park at about 9:30 Sunday morning. Our intention was to cross the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco before traffic was bad. Instead of going straight on through without stopping as was the original plan, I turned on some side streets to get to the Golden gate park below the bridge. We found a good parking place and went walking. I even walked out on the bridge. We spent several hours taking pictures and browsing around. It was really terrific even if there was fog. We left the bridge and drove around quite a while getting lost trying to get back to highway 1. Found it after one of many wrong turns through a park where they were having an old car show cruise in. Headed south looking for a campsite. Found one just south of Santa Cruz. It is Seacliff state beach. It is very nice on the beach, but without any hookups, or showers, water, or dump station. All that for $33 per night. We thought being Sunday night that we would have no problems finding a site. We found out that the camp sites are hard to get unless you make a reservation. Everyplace is so crowded out here. Went in grocery store, could hardly get through the aisles, and the parking lot was full. On top of that prices are pretty high. Paid 3.30 a gallon for gas. In the pictures, the first is us driving on bridge, third is city skyline, fourth is Alcatraz.