Tag: Hearst Castle

Cayucos, Hearst Castle, and the Wine Country

California’s Pacific Coast Highway is one of the best motorcycle roads on the planet, and I never miss an opportunity to travel it.  One of my favorite destinations on the Pacific Coast Highway is Hearst Castle.  We’ve written about it previously here on ExNotes.

As the title of this blog implies, base camp was in Cayucos, California, instead of Cambria (more on that below).  And from a photography perspective, instead of lugging around my boat-anchor, full-frame Nikon D810, I took the smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 with a “walking around” 18-55mm lens and a Rokinon 8mm (a super wide angle).  I’ve been using that combination more and more lately.

The Rokinon 8mm super wide angle lens. Manual everything, it’s fun to use and it does a surprisingly good job.
There’s not much in San Simeon, so people who visit Hearst Castle usually stay in Cambria. We stayed a stone’s throw away from Cambria in Cayucos, which is just north of Morro Bay.

Most folks who visit Hearst Castle stay in Cambria, a touristy, kitschy spot just down the road from San Simeon (the Hearst Castle location).  This time we tried Cayucos, a tiny town that’s a bit further south down the Pacific Coast Highway.  It’s friendlier, less expensive, and for my money, a lot nicer and more enjoyable than Cambria.  Sue and I stayed in the Sunset Inn, a bed and breakfast in Cayucos.  If you’re in Cayucos, the Ludano restaurant is the place for dinner (William Randolph Hearst was a regular here while building Hearst Castle).  For a more casual Cayucos dining experience, Duckie’s (near the Cayucos Pier) is an awesome walkup seafood restaurant (try the fish and chips; they were great).

Hearst Castle, as seen through the Rokinon 8mm super wide.
The Neptune swimming pool at Hearst Castle.
One of the Hearst Castle’s guest bedrooms.
The Hearst Castle dining room.
Hearst Castle’s indoor swimming pool.

The Rokinon lens is strictly a manual affair.  It doesn’t autofocus and it doesn’t work with the camera’s automatic metering features.  It’s manual everything…focus, f stop, ISO, and shutter speed.  The focus part was easy…I simply cranked the focus ring all the way over to infinity (with a wide-angle lens, that works).  For ISO, shutter speed, and f stop, I used the camera’s histogram.  Shoot, check the histogram, adjust, shoot again, check the histogram, adjust, and keep going until things are just right.  Too dark, and I adjusted the shutter speed, the f stop, and the ISO until the histogram showed everything between the histogram upper and lower limits.   Too light, and I made adjustments in the opposite direction.   For the money, the Rokinon lens is a lot of fun, and I like the effects I get with a wide -angle lens.  Some folks don’t.  That’s okay.  It’s my gear and these are my photos.

As mentioned earlier, I also used the Nikon 18-55mm lens on this trip.  It’s not the sharpest lens but that’s okay.  I’m not the sharpest matzoh in the box, either, and a matching lens fits me well.  When I shoot in RAW (the camera’s capture everything, sort-it-out-later-in-Photoshop mode), the 18-55mm lens works surprisingly well, like in the photo at the top of this blog.   It’s a shot of the Cayucos Pier, in which I did a little bit of post-processing to darken the sky and the water.  I’m pleased with the results.

While we walked the pier, we talked to folks who were fishing from it.  The fishing was good:  Halibut, perch, and one fellow had landed a 4-foot shark earlier in the day (I wish I had been there when that happened; that would have been a hell of a picture).

The Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex camera and the 18-55mm zoom lens that comes with the camera. It’s not a super sharp lens, but it’s not super expensive, either.

I took the photo below with the 18-55mm lens just a few miles up the Pacific Coast Highway.  These are elephant seals and I liked how this photo turned out, too.

One of several elephant seal vista points along California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The two in the water was grunting loudly at each other in a domination contest. These seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds.

You know, the discussions about lenses, cameras, and photography can go on endlessly.   Sometimes all you need is a cell phone.  I was blown away by the photos Joe Gresh grabbed when he recently visited Laguna Seca after riding his Kawasaki ZRX from New Mexico.  Joe shot all of those with his iPhone, which is a much easier way to go on a motorcycle.  When I travel with a digital single lens reflex camera on a motorcycle, the camera and a couple of lenses steal a lot of saddlebag space.  There’s advantages and disadvantages to everything, I guess.

Old Creek Road out of Cayucos is a fun ride.

Riding the Pacific Coast Highway is a bucket list ride, and if you get an opportunity to do so, you should grab it.  The area I’m describing in this blog is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  The Pacific Coast Highway is currently closed around Gordo (well north of San Simeon), but that still leaves a lot of nice riding on the table.  One of the best rides is Old Creek Road northeast out of Cayucos.  It’s a lightly traveled and grand road, full of twisties, and it cuts through the California wine country to link up with State Route 46 (another fine road through the wine country).  A few miles further east, 46 intersects Highway 41, and that’s where James Dean lost his life in a car accident (there’s a sign marking the spot).  There are a lot of interesting things and a lot of interesting roads in California.

More Epic Rides are here!

Hearst Castle

I had my RX3 out this Memorial Day weekend.  It’s an iconic motorcycle, and it’s one I’ve ridden on three continents.  I hadn’t ridden the RX3 in a few months, and it felt good to be on it again.  Light, responsive, fully equipped, and five years old, my RX3 can and has gone the distance.

I’m thinking about a motorcycle ride up the Pacific Coast Highway to Hearst Castle, and Hearst Castle is a bucket list destination on a bucket list road.  I’d like to do it on my RX3.  Trust me on this: It doesn’t get much better than the Pacific Coast Highway and Hearst Castle.

The Pacific Coast Highway. Life doesn’t get much better than this, folks.  Any motorcycle ride on the PCH is magnificent, and a stop at Hearst Castle makes it even better.

What’s Hearst Castle all about?  Here’s the Reader’s Digest version: William Randolph Hearst is a dude who had more money than God.  His dad came to California during the Gold Rush and somehow managed not to find any gold, but he went a few hills over and hit it big with silver.  Ever hear of the Comstock Lode?  Well, that was George Hearst back in the 1800s.  Father George was a mining guy, and he sort of fell into the newspaper business when he accepted the San Francisco Examiner as payment for a gambling debt.   While all this was going on, young William Randolph Hearst (George’s son) got himself expelled from Harvard, and somehow after that landed a job on the Examiner (ah, nepotism in action).  And while all that was occurring, George bought 40,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Mountains (on the central California coast) so the family had a place to go camping.

I guess some folks run out of things to do when they’re rich, but not young William.  He decided to he needed a castle.   So he built one.  On the family property (which he inherited in 1919) in San Simeon.  It’s one hell of story, and there’s more to it than I can cover here in the blog, but it will soon be in a major motorcycle magazine (and when that happens, I’ll give you the link here).  In advance of that, though, I’ll share a few Hearst Castle photos with you.

The front door to Casa Grande. Bill Hearst liked big doors.
Art, tapestries, ceilings, and more…all this stuff is the result of Hearst’s agents scouring the castles and churches of Europe, and returning the good stuff to California. It’s good to be the king.
One of two Olympic-sized pools at Hearst Castle. This is the first one Hearst built, but guests complained they could hear the staff working upstairs. Undaunted, Old Bill designated this pool for staff only, and built an even larger one outdoors for his guests. The indoor pool makes for a stunning photo op, I think. The blue tiles are custom crafted. It really is amazing.
Dinner was a big deal when Bill held the Hearst Corporation reins. The word “impressive” just isn’t adequate here.
The view from La Cuesta Encantada (the Enchanted Hill) looking west to the Pacific Ocean.

So there you have it.  But there’s more…lots more.  You have to see Hearst Castle to believe it, and it is a stellar thing to see.  Hearst Castle and the Pacific Coast Highway make for a great motorcycle ride.