Wok N Roll with us...Bob and Teri Along with Atlas and Kalani: December 2018

We made a quick trip to Cambria, California, mainly to celebrate Thanksgiving with our oldest son Paul and his wife Casey in their beautiful new home. It was a great trip and their new home is beautiful with a view of the ocean out the front and a pine forest right behind their deck in the back.

We stayed at the Cambria Pines lodge complete with a real fireplace in our room. On the grounds of the lodge they had one of the most impressive Christmas light displays we have been too. The lodge spends over 3 months setting up the display and it was a fun thing to experience as we walked through the pines enjoying all the lights.

We decided while there we would visit Hearst Castle. Most notable on this Hearst Castle visit was the differences I found than were in my memories from when I was about 11 years old. I certainly did not remember so much concrete. But the concrete has probably saved this treasure that resides in a seismic activity zone. I also did not remember so much of the castle having never been finished. Unlike my memories as a child, on this visit I found the collections within the castle to be more fascinating than the building itself. Bob and I have visited several homes of the rich/famous and the key difference we found was that Hearst did not seem to bring in skilled artisans to build lavish marble columns and such rather he mainly re purposed all sorts of art that he bought through various catalogs. I also had no recollection of Mr. Hearst’s open affair with a showgirl that lasted until his death 34 years later and that his wife outlived him by over 20 years. But then again, maybe these sorts of stories were not told on tours in the 60’s.

After visiting the castle, we took the short drive up the coast to see the elephant seals. While we have seen them before they are always fun to watch most especially how inefficiently they move while on the sand. Being Thanksgiving weekend, I thought that most of them looked as though they had overindulged early.

We had a lovely visit with our son and his wife and her parents and siblings during our remaining days. We all enjoyed the great Thanksgiving Feast, good conversation and a fun game of Mexican Train too.