I went to the Hearst Castle when I was short. I don't remember anything about it, although Dad tells me that on the van ride to the top, I regaled the people sitting near me with tales of our family: "Mommy tries to get Daddy drunk every night, because when he's drunk, he passes out and doesn't beat her." I think I'm exaggerating a little, but Dad tells me it happened that way. I was anxious to refresh my memories of the Castle, and since it's midway between Salinas and the wine country, it seemed like a fine idea on this trip.

The only issue was Sparky!, who was not allowed on the tour. There are no kennels at the Castle, so we got the name of a lady nearby who would puppy-sit in her home. We picked up our tickets at will call, then dropped Shorty Pants off at her house and high-tailed it back to the Visitor Center, just in time to do our tour.

We did the "Experience" tour, which gives you an overview of the Castle. There are several other tours that focus on specific areas, such as the gardens, but we didn't have time to do them on this trip.

I will do the obligatory "Citizen Kane" reference up front.

"Rose...bud."

And a few more roses from one of the gardens.

We started with the pool and casitas--guest houses. Kane, oops, I mean Hearst, built this pool three times before he was happy with it. The first two iterations were too small. The pool was empty when we were there. It was leaking approximately 5000 gallons of water per day, and needed more extensive repairs than they were able to do with water in the pool.

I believe this is the Neptune Pool, hence all the Greco-Roman statuary around the thing. The tour guide joked that it was going to take a while to fill the pool back up with the garden hose that can be seen hanging down into the pool.

A look back at the pool as we approach one of the casitas, which is Californian for "guest house."

The "Casa del Sol."

This is a guest house. In my neighborhood, if you want a guest house, you convert a detached garage. We tore ours down, so our guest quarters are now a futon in the office. That is the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots." Futon or splendid mansion.

The front door.

I'm lame, I know, and I'm about to explain why, so that you, too, will celebrate my lameness. I look at this place and the detail, and the first thought that crossed my mind as I looked at the door and the tile surrounding it was, "this is fractals, man." I'll probably mess this up, then Google will pick it up, and I'll start hearing from mathematicians across the planet, but basically, fractals try and throw a decimal point into standard 1 and 2 dimensional geometry, so that something occupies 1.4 dimensions. If, in mapping the coastline of California, you make the map small enough, the Pacific Coast could theoretically become nearly a straight line. But as you zoom in on the coast, you begin to see irregularities: inlets, bays, protuberances, etc. It's not really a straight line anymore. As you continue to zoom in, you eventually get down to individual grains of sand. Benoit [heh, heh, he said ben wah] Mandelbrot was the mathematician that began exploring what he eventually called the "Fractional Geometry of Nature." He began creating images out of mathematical equations, and found that as you zoomed in on the image (i.e. going from a range of -0.5 to 0.5 to a range of -0.005 to 0.005) interesting things begin to happen. The classic Mandelbrot pattern is shown below. If you're interested, a very accessible book is Chaos, (which also discusses the Butterfly Effect, for all the Ashton fans in the house).

This is the classic Mandelbrot pattern. If you were to zoom in on any one of those smaller round circles attached to the larger ones, you'd continue to see small round circles, attached to larger ones. You look more closely, and detail continues to resolve. This increasing level of detail was my thought as I walked through the casita.

You stand at the visitor center, and can see this hazy thing on the hill. As you take the bus up, more details resolve, until you're looking at a building, but as you begin to examine the building, even more details open up. The design in the door yields faces.

Closer inspection of the faces reveals crow's feet and liver spots. Ewwwwww.

Fig. A. Phyllis Diller.

The walls resolve into individual tiles.

There are thousands of different tiles throughout the walkways.

The glazed tile. Terra cotta. Exposed aggregate. The narrow tile set in the concrete. I was amazed at how the detail just keeps opening up.

We live in Arizona, where we throw up ugly stucco boxes all over the once-pristine desert.

The idea of detail here is two colors of paint. So I go to the Hearst Castle, and am stunned at the amount of detail, and at the level of focus Hearst must have had on the design to specify all of this stuff for a creation this large. He referred to himself as an "associate architect."

Anyway, enough geometric digression.

The casitas were Hearst's guestrooms (although he lived in one for a while during construction of other buildings). I'd be liking it if I showed up to visit someone and this was my bedroom.

There are several other similar rooms in the casita.

Here is what we're used to in the 602.

Ewwwww. (I swiped these two photos from some real estate website.)

A ceiling detail.

From the casita, we were led past gardens and statuary to the main building.

The land out there all belonged to the Hearst corporation. There is an airstrip down there, where Hearst used to have copies of all his newspapers flown in daily. The Castle and buildings were donated to the state of California, and are now a state park. Hearst corporation still owns much of the land surrounding the Castle, and uses it as ranchland.

On the left are 5000 year old Egyptian statues. Leisa and I would just like to get a concrete or fiberglass dinosaur for our backyard. Haves and have-nots.

Hearst has priceless art, we yearn for tacky fiberglass.

It almost looks like the balcony in Virginia City. Almost. 

We rested for a few moments in front of the water feature.

The water feature itself is about the size of our backyard.

Here's Leisa, kickin' it in her crib.

She's thinking, "they could use a few more flowerpots around here."

A closer shot of the horseman over the front door.

And here are Brittany and Sarah, who are more interested in last night's roller coaster, apparently.

Look at the detail in the columns. And the ranger was standing right next to me, urging me along, otherwise there would've been a picture of the Wake-up Bunny here:

We were led inside, through the living room, dining room, pool room, and home theater.

The fat chick in blue was having a real hard time with the stairs. She'd pause, and stop her kid and say, "if you need to rest, we can rest right here for a moment," as they were climbing the 150-200 stairs on the tour. The kid is on her way to being as big as mom, but seemed to be doing okay. It was mom who needed the rest.

The walls are there to hold the tapestries.

A little blurry--tripods aren't allowed--but this is one of many fireplaces.

Wood carving detail of a concealed door, flanked by seats.

The dining room. Hearst used to like to offend his snobby east coast guests by putting mustard and ketchup on the table in the original bottles. You can barely make it out on the center of the table. I have a better photo. Remind me, and I'll put it up here.

Overhead.

The tour guide told us that the production design folks for the Harry Potter movies came to look at this room to replicate the look for the films.

Remind me, and I'll put a shot of the billiard room here. I forgot to edit the photo.

From the billiard room, we went into the theater. It is a real movie theater, with a screen (no 16.9 in those days, it was 1.33:1), and a projection booth. This is one of the light fixtures in the theater. "Citizen Kane" was never shown in Hearst's theater.

From the theater, we went out and looked at the tennis courts, then down into the indoor pool.

The pool is about 10 feet deep, except for the grotto, which leads off the side of the pool. That's four feet deep. The light in the grotto is provided by glass tiles set in the surface of the tennis court, which is directly above the pool area. It is said to be exceptionally romantic by the light of the full moon. Above the grotto is a diving platform. Cool pool!

And now, a few very special photographs of the Castle, in an area I call "Butts."