🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <fbfUb.18856$GB7.4058@newssvr24.news.prodigy.com>, Simon
Belmont <123@abc.xyz> wrote:

> "Allan Schaffer" <allan@southpark.engr.sgi.com> wrote in message
> > Plan stops in San Simeon/Hearst Castle
> 
> I've heard a number of recommendations here to visit Hearst Castle.
> I always thought it was a tourist trap made even more tourist trappy
> by Awnuld's state park fee hike. 

A gratuitous political comment I will ignore.

> It's just a big estate right? Also, is
> the estate's grandeur not attributed to its intent to bring in visitors?

No, there is no indication Hearst built it or added to it so as to
bring in visitors. 


> There is nothing wrong with spectacles built to fit a purpose, but to
> self-spectacularize for the sole purpose of being a spectacle is vain.
> Maybe I'm totally off-base...I've never been there or experienced it.

I have. Impressive.

You seem to have trolled ba.food quite well, generating dozens of
research tips. If you are still seeking more recommendations, the
Monterey Bay Aquarium, at the other end of the Big Sur drive from
Hearst Castle, is even more worth a stop than the castle is.

However, this is very far from your original point about how you were
planning to zoom up I-5 and wanted a few eating recommendations for the
trip.

By the way, if you truly have never driven either 1 or 101 from LA to
SF, then you should definitely take one of them in lieu of I-5. Even if
you don't stop at Superica or Solvang or Hearst or MBA or Duarte's or
wherever, even if you just pack a bag lunch or eat burritos out of
AM/PM Mini-Markets, what you see on either 101 or 1 or a combination
will far surpass what you see on I-5. None of the food recommendations
here is likely to be out of the ordinary (the ones which intersect with
what I have tried certainly are not), but parts of the California coast
are certainly extraordinary.

(And if you _have_ driven either 101 or 1, then why did you feign
ignorance? I'll assume you never have, therefore the paragraph above
applies.)

Someone said it gets dark too early to be worth driving this time of
year. Not so. I've done the Big Sur drive from the LA area to my home
in the Santa Cruz area many times at Christmas. Leave LA by 9 and
you'll be in SLO by noon. From there, plenty of daylight left until
Monterey is reached, even with some stops for photos (and a burrito).

Once you reach Monterey, whether its dark or not is not a big deal.
(BTW, at that point you should take one of the highways over to 101 and
continue that route, which will take you through Silicon Valley into
SF.)

--Tim May