I think you could spend your whole life exploring California and never quite see it all.  I have many favourite areas, the Sierras, Sequoia National Park, Joshua Tree but Big Sur has captured my heart the most. As a vast generalisation, for those of you who don’t know California very well, it’s north along the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, just below Monterey.

In our area of Southern California the beaches are lovely but they’re just straight strips of sand.  No cliffs, tide pools or rocks to explore.  Along Big Sur not only are the views breathtaking, but the rugged beaches are empty, there are wonderful crafty shops along the way such as Nepenthe, cafes such as the Big Sur Bakery and winding roads which make sure you drive slowly and take in absolutely everything.

And one day, I want to stay at the Post Ranch Inn.  It will have to be for an extremely special occasion, click through and take a look at the rooms, heaven on earth.  Just one night in their Cliff room will be fine!

During the drive along Big Sur, there are lots of stops but McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is a must.  It’s a short walk down to the cliffs over looking the bay.  The colour of the water is just amazing.

I spent a little while looking through all my photos of California and picked this one for Tara’s The Gallery.  This is the relaxed side of California, away from cars, people, smog, stress.

California has so much to offer and at risk of sounding like a Tourist Information Center, the main problem is, where do you start?

During our recent trip to Mammoth Lakes, we took a trip out to Bodie State Historic Park.  It’s an old gold mining ghost town and I was expecting a one street town with a saloon, jail and places to tie up horses, just like an old cowboy film.  But Bodie is so much bigger than this, and I was surprised.  At its hey day 10,000 people lived in the town, it was bigger than Los Angeles which only had 3,000 residents.

The town is named for Waterman S. Body (William Bodey) who found gold in the hills in 1875 but the boom was short lived and by the 1940s the town had been abandoned.  It became a state park in 1962 and is maintained in a state of ‘arrested decay.’

There are streets to wander down, an old mine, a church, gas station and a bank.  Some of the buildings have furniture left inside from when it was abandoned and the museum has a huge amount of items which really gives you a sense of what the town was like, the clothes people were wearing and the lives they were experiencing.

Even the red lamp used by a well-known lady of the night, Rosa May, is there.  You can see Rosa’s gravestone just outside of the graveyard because she wasn’t respectable enough to be included inside the fence.

You soon come to realize that life at Bodie was tough, really tough.  Many children died during the freezing winters and there were lots of saloon brawls, stage holdups and killings on almost a daily basis.  Before leaving to go and live in Bodie, one child wrote in her diary, ‘Good bye God, I’m going to Bodie.’

The boys were fascinated by the letters in the museum from the various people who had taken things from Bodie, old nails or pieces of glass, only to have a run of bad luck.  The visitors have sent back the items along with letters pleading for forgiveness in the hope that their run of bad luck will end.

During the summer months, you can reach Bodie via a 3-mile dirt road.  The park is northeast of Yosemite just south of Bridgeport on Highway 395.  The park is open year round although in the winter it is only accessible via skis, snowshoes or snow mobile.  I’d love to visit then and experience a winter day there.  I can imagine it would be brutal.

The state park warns you ‘This is a real ghost town; splinters; nails and broken glass are everywhere.’   Just don’t take anything!

We toured Hearst Castle last week during a drive up the coast.  It sits up in the hills above San Simeon, near Cambria.  It’s a fascinating place to stop and a good place to break your journey as you travel along Highway 1 between San Luis Obispo and Monterey.

William Randolph Hearst created the estate during the 1920s and 30s.  It is filled with antiquities from Spain and Italy, some of them over 1,000 years old.  Hearst wanted to create a feeling of the Mediterranean from over 500 years ago.

There are a number of different tours you can take.  The house and grounds are so vast it would be impossible to take it all in in one go.  The best option is to start with tour Number One.  It’s a basic tour; you see the main rooms in Casa Grande including the movie theater and one of the guesthouses.  You also see the two swimming pools.  The remaining tours take you on other sections of the house, or the garden during the summer.  There’s also an evening tour, which features people dressed up in period costume bringing the house to life.

Whether you appreciate architecture and antiques or not, the castle is fascinating just to see what Hearst achieved.  Buses take you up the winding road to the estate; it’s an incredibly remote spot.  On the tour you learn that all the antiques were brought in by boat to the San Simeon pier and then driven very slowly up the hill.  Quite an amazing feat back in the 20s and 30s.

The stories with the castle are intriguing.  Movie stars, presidents, prime ministers came to stay and our tour guide created an incredibly romantic view of the indoor pool at midnight, lit by orbs, the water steaming from the heat and Marlene Dietrich taking a swim.

Hearst also loved animals, so along with the huge collection of cattle, there were polar bears, zebras and deer.  If you look out, just south of the castle as you drive up, you may still see zebras.

The castle is surrounded by dry, barren hills, making this lush oasis even more impressive.  The heat is intense so Hearst didn’t spend much time there in the summer but with properties in Mexico, New York and St Donat’s Castle in Wales, he had other places to spend his summers.

We visited many years ago and were surprised to find a brand new visitors center this time.  It’s very well organized; drinks and snacks are available along with a vast array of Heart Castle logo items.  The air conditioning is very welcome too.

It’s worth a stop.  And as you take the bus up to the estate, just imagine the people that have taken that road before you as you wind back and for.  I’m certain the castle has a great deal of stories to tell.