La Brea Tar Pits, San Simeon

Sunday we got a little later start and went down to Uncle Bill's Pancakes in Manhattan Beach. The buckwheat blueberry cakes that I had were excellent, as were the buttermilks and the fried potatoes, but the omelet wasn't up to our high CA standards. The homes along the beach were very nice, I suspect that they are priced in the millions, but they didn't all LOOK that way, and it was really fun to imagine settling down to one of those for a few weeks in the cold part of the year. Maybe no quite warm enough for some in the family though!

We had hopes of doing the Getty Museum but discovered it was closed on Monday. We ended up going over and standing in line for only about an hour at 2:30 to get a Pink's Hot Dog!
We saw them on the hotel TV the first night in and thought we had to try them out--they were right, it is almost always well over an hour wait. We stopped in on Saturday, and waited for about 45 min before we realized how slow the line was going and that it was going to interfere with too much to wait then. They are good hot dogs, not that expensive by Hollywood standards, but in no way "worth the wait", although it is clear that the wait is part of the experience!

We saw the La Brea tar pits, which I've been impressed with ever since I was a small kid reading the encyclopedias. They make much the same point that I've heard a few times that most of the large mammals-ground sloths, north American Mastadon and Mammoth, north American Lion, Sabre Tooth "tiger"( cat) etc, all went extinct in a short period around 10-11K years ago. Caused by man? Climate change? Something else? Nobody seems to have the answers, and compared with a lot of geologic / paleontology mysteries, not that ancient. Interesting place, right in the middle of the city now.

Keenan was a bit under the weather with some sniffles, so he retired to the hotel and Marla and I headed down to the beach to watch the sunset, downtown Santa Monica for a little shopping, and then to Lares Mexican Restaurant for dinner. It was very highly rated, nice place, valet parking, but the food was only "very good"--would rather eat at a couple places around home.

We launched at 8:30 with Keenan feeling better. Stopped and had breakfast at Paradise Cove in Malibu. Great view of the water and excellent food. Hit the road and booked it north up Hwy 1 to the Hearst Castle. Lots of beautiful strawberrys being picked out of huge fields along the roads. Amazing farming in California.

The Hearst Castle was more that I expected it to be. 5 miles away from the ocean and 1,600' up, it sits atop a hill where the Hearst's had a hunting camp when WR was a child. His mother took him to Europe for a year and 1/2 when he was 10 and he was impressed with the great homes, cathedrals and ruins. He wanted it all brought together, and he enjoyed "projects". He hired a brilliant woman Architect, Julia Morgan and they created together without an overall plan ... a number of false starts and do-over's including three rebuilds of the amazing Neptune Pool.

The thought I had in walking through it was that today's rich lack imagination. Hearst was the first leading Newspaper man with an empire that ran from coast to coast, centered on his San Francisco Chronical. He was a congressman three times as a Democrat, and considered himself a progressive/populist Democrat. I suppose today, Rupert Murdoch might be somewhat of an equivalent, but I don't see him building the modern equivalent of the Hearst Castle. Maybe that time is past, or the wealthy are simply too busy to spend time and money in the construction of great projects.

It is interesting for one in their 51st year to note that he didn't get started until he was 56 in 1919, and worked on it continuously until his health would no longer allow it in 1947.