Hearst Castle Exteriors

 William Randolph "Citizen Kane" Hearst was a newspaper magnate back in the 20's when you could spend 30 years building a mansion full of centuries old artworks in the back hills of California and then surround it with exotic imported animals. It was a simpler time when you could ship your wife off to New York so you could live with your mistress, invite the Marx Brothers over for the weekend, and raise zebras in your 240,000 acre backyard.

 Not only did Hearst live in a time when having Charlie Chaplin over for bootlegged rum was a social event and not a fever dream, he also lived when modern antiquities trafficking was called "redecorating". The entire grounds are covered with various greek and roman treasures but I found this Egyptian statue of of Sekmet a particularly unlikely purchase to try and make in the 21st century.

 The "Neptune Pool" occupies a sizeable area with a network of walkways and guest houses around it. Since California is having a water crisis and the pool has a "leak" (of apparently several thousand gallons a day) the area was drained and under repairs, but is still a striking place to have a walk around.

 

The grounds of Hearst Castle are absolutely amazing to explore, and I would heartily endorse anyone wanting to visit to bring a wide-angle or fisheye lens with them as the photographic opportunities are incredible.

Beauty and the Beach

 LA may have its share of snarled slow moving traffic and urban sprawl, but it also has amazing and lovely beaches that go for miles and miles and miles. On our last full day in the city we took a morning trip to Playa del Rey to enjoy the sun and surf. There were a handful of dolphins hunting nearby and though we chose not to try and swim out to them, it was very fun to see their fins in the water.

 Kathryn is a particular delight to watch play in the waves, and I'm sure most photographers would agree that the true reason burst mode was developed for cameras was to get just the right picture of a lovely girl in a bikini splashing through the water ;)

 The beach also had a derelict boat which had washed ashore years ago which had anything valuable stripped out and the rest was covered in graffiti. The waves and current have a strange suction at this beach and even standing on the waterline you can feel the sand pulled out from under your feet with every wave, so its no great surprise that the wreck is half full of sand and would be a huge pain to move.

Santa Barbara Mission

 On our drive from Los Angeles to Monterey, we stopped in the town of Santa Barbara to visit their Franciscan mission (click on the image below to enlarge it). Various iterations and improvements on this place of worship have been underway since 1786 and it represents just one of the missions dotting along the California coast.

 The main courtyard houses an enormous fig tree which really benefits from a wide angle lens to try and capture just how completely it fills the area and provides a delightful cooling shade. This courtyard was also home to several species of birds and a number of small lizards which could be found sunning themselves on trees or rocks.

 This side gate was a small feature of the entire mission, but for me captured more of what I had expected from an early-settlement California "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" sort of holy place. While the modern mission is very appealing, this part of the wall felt a bit like looking through time to the original building of long ago.