I CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

Jules’ Journal: Hearst Castle + a Turn of Events...

By: Julianne Lillie, 3/23/23

Thursday started out great, but then it took a bit of a turn! I always must remind my “Type A planner” self that I’m just along for the ride, Jesus is in the cockpit! Today was one of those days! We'll start with the great part first...

After 2 rainy & windy days in Paso Robles, we FINALLY got a partly sunny day! This is supposed to be our travel day 2 hours North to Paicines, however since Hearst Castle cancelled their tours for weather the past 2 days, this morning was our only shot! Therefore, we work up early, made lunch for our road trip later, and were out the door by 7:30am! We drove one hour up to San Simeon where Hearst Castle is and checked in for our 9am tour. We were 15 minutes early so we had time to walk through the exhibits in the museum before we boarded our shuttle. Once we had boarded and were on our ride to the top of the “Enchanted Hill” as William R. Hearst referred to it, we spotted 1 coyote and a whole herd of Aoudads (pronounced OOH-DADS).

Hearst used to have the largest private zoo & wildlife park in the Nation on his 200,000 acres of land. Many of his animals were donated to public zoos once he had passed. But some of the wilder roaming animals stayed to roam this grass covered mountains. In fact, we did see a herd of wild Zebras on our way to the Castle earlier but were driving too fast to snap a picture once we had realized what they were! But still very neat to see!

Once we arrived at the top of the hill, our tour guide took us to a terrace overlooking the land & California coastline. William R. Hearst had owned 14 miles of California coastline at one time – that just blew my mind!

The terrace was the front patio of his “medium-sized cottage” which was an exquisite mansion in and of itself!

Then we strolled over to see the Neptune pool in all its glory!

It was massive and had so many beautiful marble statues!

Here's the Terrace above the Neptune Pool:

Then our tour guide pointed out the “small” & “large” cottages on our way up to the Castle’s entrance – which again, were each a mansion in their own right!

"Small" Cottage:

"Large" Cottage:

Hearst, being infatuated with European architecture & design, wanted to mimic a European Village on his Enchanted Hill. So, he had his home designed as a mission-style Cathedral Church set at the hilltop. Then his guest cottages were nestled down below his home. This design was modeled after the Spanish cities/villages in the Gothic & Renaissance eras. Many of his architecture & ornamental design came from old Spanish style cathedrals, missions, castles, convents, etc. He hired architect Julia Morgan to build him “a little something on the hill.” The “little something” started out as a simple Ranch cottage and grew to be plans for a Castle & guest cottages that took 28 years to complete! Here's the Grand Entrance:

The Iron Gate/Door was so massive and much too valuable to use anymore for tours, so we used the side door to enter our first room.

The first grand room we got to tour was the Assembly Room. The Renaissance style tapestries on the walls were purchased by Hearst from France that had been displayed in King Louis’ Palace. They were woven with pure gold threads.

Hearst was also a collector of ceilings and Choir stalls that he would purchase from retired cathedrals and palaces for Julia Morgan to install in his Castle. The Choir banisters Julia used as “paneling” or “ship lap” for his grand room’s walls.

Next, we entered the Refectory (i.e., Dining Room) which was designed using Gothic style.

It was so elaborate & Grand, especially with the flags hanging. The flags are from a Traditional horse race in Spain that is still active to this day.

The ketchup & mustard bottles were on the table (rather than in ornamental/fancy dishes) to remind his guests that this was not “high society” dinner parties like in NYC. Rather this was “camping” in California! Ha!

We then proceeded into the Morning Room. It was called this because the room is lit up by the morning sunshine.

Did you notice yet another fabulous ceiling!?

The ceiling in the Morning Room was purchased by Hearst, but it was much too small for Julia Morgan’s plans. Therefore, she had to enlarge the ceiling. Her team matched the once brown color of the wooden ceiling and built the outer extension rim all the way around it. It wasn’t discovered until just last year that the ceiling was colorfully painted! One of the art curators noticed chipped paint on the floor last fall so he got a ladder to inspect it closer. That’s when he discovered the ceiling was painted… not just brown wood! It took the art restoration team many painstaking months using. Only Q-tips to preserve the ceiling & reveal its beautifully painted design. The work was completed just before Christmas! So, we were one of the few that have seen the ceiling in all its glory!

From there, we headed into the Billiards Room. There were 2 tables, 2 different games. Again, another gorgeous tapestry and exquisite reclaimed travertine tiles.

And...another gorgeous ceiling! Just look at that intricate detail!

And then we got to enter his private theatre where he loved to watch movies with his guests. We got to watch a short 5-minute video footage (no audio) of him and some of the many guests he had out to his castle. He had so many high calibers people from all different industries: Cary Grant, Walt Disney, and Byng Crosby to name just a few.

Our last stop was the Roman Pool which was his indoor swimming pool with a high dive. The entire room and pool were inlaid with beautifully patterned mosaic tiles.

They had removed some of the ceiling panels to try to repair a leak, so normally those would have been just as ornate!

Here's the high dive platform:

All the gold tiles you see where pure gold leafed tiles… so we were walking on pure gold!

After that, we hopped on the shuttle & road back to the visitor center. We got to see the Aoudads again on our decent!

We quickly purchased our souvenirs and hit the road. Didn't even have time to snap a good pic of these two goofballs!

We had a one hour drive back which didn’t put us back at the campground until noon! (And we had an 11am check out time – Oops!) We kicked into high gear and were pulling out by 12:30pm. 30 minutes flat! (Luckily the park was pretty empty, and no one was waiting on us.)

We had a 2-hour drive to San Benito RV Park & Resort in Paicines, CA. Kids worked on their schoolwork on the way after we ate our lunch in the car. Now this road we were on was super windy and hilly. It was putting a ton of strain on our hitch and brackets, but luckily everything was holding up despite the creaking and squeaking! I’m sure it would have been a very pretty drive without the stress of hauling a trailer. We had switch backs and S curves the whole way!

This was about as long as we had on a straight road!

I did snap this pic of the beautiful wildflowers growing on the hillside.

As we were nearing the campground, we realized we weren’t seeing any RVs whatsoever… not even a camper van. That seemed odd to us, so I double checked our paperwork. We confirmed the address in the GPS was correct and our dates were correct. I even pulled up the reminder to check in email that I received on 3/16 and confirmed the address & dates were correct. I proceeded to try to check in online, but I kept getting an error. I figured it was just my connectivity as we had very little cell service in the valley.

We finally saw a Thousand Trails sign with an arrow, so that encouraged us that we were on the right path! A couple miles later saw another sign and followed that arrow. Finally, we made it to the entrance to the RV park only to find a barricade over the entrance side that said, “Area closed for tree trimming.”

Now this entrance just led to a windy road, and we assumed the park was back up in the valley further. We saw some tree cutting equipment near, so we stopped and I tried calling the RV Park. I called and it rang and rang and then stated the voicemail was full and hung up on me. Tried it again and same result. I then dug out the Thousand Trails customer service number (because we pay for this membership), and I followed all of the prompts only to find out all agents are busy and they could call me back in one hour. Well, that wasn’t going to work for us since we were stopped in the middle of the road! At this point, Jason decided to just go in the exit since it was clearly open, and we thought we’d just drive back in there to see what’s going on.

On we drove about 300 feet we could see a few trailers back in there! We stopped at the gate, no one is in the gatehouse to raise it up. We read the sign saying to check in at the office. So, we look around and see this white building with the door open, so we thought… okay, that must be the office! So, we got out of the truck & left the kids. As we were making our way over there, I got an eerie feeling… it was like this place had been deserted! There were several buildings, all with the doors wide open. Abandoned golf cart & other machinery. It was weird…I felt like the rapture had happened and we got left behind!

I ended up stopping because my shoes were getting muddy and let Jason continue in his hiking boots. He got to the white building with the door opened… no one! Not even an office! Just a laundry house.

At this time, I saw a guy on a golf cart, and we flagged him down. He drove up to me and said, “Oh man, I hope we didn’t ruin your vacation!” I said, “What?” And then he said, “Oh dang, do ya’ll think we are still open? And Jason said, “Um, yeah… we have our confirmation paperwork right here.” Then he said, “Oh dang, did no one tell you that we are closed? Yeah, we’ve been closed since the 10th.” I said, “The 10th? No, all I received was a reminder email on the 16th to check in saying we’re so excited to see you in San Benito!” He then said, “Oh man, if I were you guys, I would be so pissed! I can’t believe corporate didn’t even notify you!” He then radioed the park manager to come over and talk to us.

She proceeded to tell us that 3 levees broke upstream causing the entire RV park to flashflood! It took on 6 feet of water in 30 minutes. There were 200 guests when this happened… it was a literal nightmare! Motorhomes, RVs, autos either flooded or floating! Everyone had to evacuate! They are still trying to get some RVs out, but a bridge was damaged during the flood, and they are still waiting on an architect to approve the repairs before they can pull them out of the park. The work campers that have returned to start repairing the RV Park still don’t have running water and are all sharing the only working freshwater line in the laundry house. They are having to carry buckets of freshwater to their campers to fill up their tanks. She said it’s been awful! She said if they did have running water, she’d let us stay, but since they don’t have water yet… she couldn’t. In fact, she told us that the entire San Benito County & neighboring county is out of water. Even their sister RV park 12 miles away is a mess and are also closed down. She apologized profusely and took our paperwork so she could personally file a complaint to corporate on our behalf.

We both felt so bad for her and her team of workers. I cannot even imagine living through something like that & having to bear the weight as the leader in charge. But at the same time, I was really ticked off that corporate didn’t bother to notify us of the park closure. No phone call. No email. No text message. I even checked my spam folder to see if it got caught there, and nothing. The Thousand Trails website doesn’t even state that San Benito was closed! Nor did either of the Thousand Trails signs we passed notified they were closed. One sign still read "Open to the public!"

The only correspondence I had received since I booked this reservation in January was the "reminder to check in" email on 3/15 and a "reminder to check in" text message on 3/16. Long after the park closed… pretty disappointing!

At this point it’s now 3:15pm, we somehow must do a U-turn and find a place to set up camp for the night! While the manager drove Jason down on her golf cart for them to scope out a place for him to get us turned around, I opened my laptop and went to work trying to find us a campground close that is OPEN with a vacancy for our 40 ft trailer! I found a KOA campground 22 miles away that had ONE spot left and could fit our trailer. It was a premium spot (meaning high price with a patio), but at this point we just don’t want to be homeless! So, I booked it online and then called the park to make sure they are still open & have running water. They answered right away and YES! They are open and are looking forward to accommodating us! PRAISE. THE. LORD. KOA has saved the day for the 2nd time this trip!

Jason returned with the plan to turn us around and he executed the 3-point turn flawlessly. (So thankful he’s so good with driving our big rig! Also, very thankful we didn’t get stuck in the mud!) I shared the Salinas/Monterey KOA RV Park's address with Jason and we were back on the road! The 22 miles translated into 45 minutes of windy driving through the hillside. But at 4:20pm we made it! And we had set up camp by 5pm. Whew!

Just when we thought things couldn’t get any weirder, we saw something we had never seen before! One of our neighbors...

Yep, that’s a PET PIG! This takes camping with your pets to a whole other level!!!!

We left the kids in the camper to stretch their legs & finish up schoolwork while Jason and I made a quick trip to Lowe’s, got diesel, and picked up Chick-fil-A for dinner. We ate dinner, graded school, and then enjoyed S’mores by the campfire while we all laughed at the ridiculousness from the day!

From the Zebras to the Aoudads, the Castle to the Pools, the winding hilly road to the closed RV park, the KOA Savior to the Pet Pig… I believe we experienced it all in ONE DAY! Whew, Jesus what a RIDE you have us on! We are certainly making memories!