San Simeon/Hearst Castle

We left Lompoc on Saturday around 2 p.m. and arrived in San Simeon about 2 hours later.  Hwy. 1 is currently closed north of San Simeon due to a previous massive landslide.  We stayed at and paid an exorbitant amount of money for a family suite at the local Quality Inn. (I'm sure it had to do with a large room, in a town with limited hotels, and a holiday weekend.)

We drove a few miles north of the hotel to the Elephant Seal Rookery (a cove that they like to hang out at).

 We spent a few moments at the beach across the street from our hotel:

We checked out another cute downtown area in Cambria about 10 minutes from our hotel where one little shop had these unique "gourmet" sodas lined up.  The top row was Root Beer only.  We each picked out our own drink for later and had an excellent dinner across the street at Linn's:

Sunday morning we got up to see Hearst Castle.  We started with the 9:00 a.m. movie at the Visitor's Center and met the tour/bus at 10:00.  It was amazing and stunning.  Each ticket was $25...and there is an obnoxious $8 each online booking fee (which is very necessary).  We took the general tour which does not take you to the upper floors/bedrooms or allow you to see the bungalows.  You are, however, allowed to stay on the grounds and catch any shuttle back whenever you wish.  (The Spanish style ranch house--fourth picture down--belongs to whomever is the ranch manager of the property.)  We had a good lunch across the street at Sebastian's (also very popular) and left around 1:30 p.m.