Scenic Highway 1 with a castle, seals and a stunning coast line at Big Sur (25.-26.2.09)

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The highway 1 runs directly along the Pacific coastline while the main traffic takes the faster inland Highway 101 or the Interstate 5 in the central valley. So after Santa Barbara the highway is hardly used.
We prepared our first camping breakfast at one of the benches with nice views on the beach and left late morning to drive to the Big Sur State Park 100 miles South of San Francisco. A camping neighbor had recommended us to stop by at famous Hearst castle. We never had heard of it, but since it was on the way we decided to have a look. It seemed to be a very big attraction from the enormous size of the parking lot. We were late for the last tour, but made it to a National Geographic movie about the history of the castle. It turned out that a guy named William Randolph Hearst, who became rich in Chicago with newspapers, built this castle around 1920. He had spent some month as child in the area and felt in love with the remote coastline and its forests. Later he intensely traveled around Europe and visited also Neuschwanstein in the Bavarian Alps. This seems became a model for him. He spent an immense time and effort to build his dream castle in a Spanish influenced style with gardens, courtyards, towers, a pool landscape and richly decorated rooms.
We continued the highway until a bay with a seal and sea lion colony. It was possible to walk along a path not far from the seals and to observe them closely. Most of them were lying lazy in the sun while occasionally there was some fighting between bigger sea lions or some shuffle for more space at the densely squeezed seals. It got late and when we entered the very steep coast at the Big Sur there was an amazing sun set. We found the state park visitor center and learnt that the State Park was closed due to intense fire the previous autumn causing heavy erosion of the trails during the rainy winter month. They recommended us to visit the other nearby state parks. We found a private camp ground 1 mile along the road with nice sites between huge redwood trees.
The next morning we woke up with rain on the tent. It was cloudy and mist hovered in the mountains.
Instead of the Big Sur, we visited the Andrew Molera state park and hiked a 1 hour trail through swamp until it hit the coast. The weather cleared up and we got some sun while heading excited towards San Francisco.

Practicalities:
- Camping per site:
Refugio State Beach near Santa Barbara 20 US$
Fernwood at Big Sur 35 US$
- Andrew Molera State Park 10 US$

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