Out to get gas before our visit to Hearst Castle. We drove down to Cambria and ended up paying $4.69 for diesel, the highest we have had to pay yet. The least expensive so far was in Sparks, NV where we found a Safeway grocery store that had a gas station. I have a Safeway shoppers card and apparently had never redeemed the points I had been accumulating as we have never been to a Safeway gas station. We got a $.60 a gallon discount bringing the price per gallon down to $3.03. Not bad! We are averaging around 18 miles a gallon going through the mountains. Luckily, across from the gas station was a little French bakery where I picked up a spinach, feta, and tomato pastry for lunch later.
We made it to the Hearst Castle by 9:30am and saw a movie about Hearst and the building of the Castle. We took the Grand Tour of the large rooms on the first floor and then the Upper Suites Tour. The tour guides made it easy to imagine what it must have been like to be a guest at the Castle. The Hearst family gave the Castle to the State of California and it is now a State Park. The Castle and grounds are very well maintained. The gardens are beautiful. Mel figures it was a good tax write off for the family and has saved them the high cost of maintaining it. When asked after the tour about the cost of maintaining the property, the tour guide mentioned the Park system in prior years was proud of making it known that the Castle was their best moneymaker. She said she hasn't heard them making such a claim in recent years...even with the $25 per ticket fee for each one of the three tours offered. 
It was impressive to learn that the architect was a woman, Julia Morgan. I was going to describe the highlights of the tour and then while checking some of the facts online, I discovered an article by a Jane Sullivan that does a much better job than I could do: "Hearst Castle: an extraordinary artificial paradise." I would only fault her for the title...I think the Castle actually was a real paradise. Check the article out here. Lots of great photos as well. Though we didn't get a chance to see any of the wild zebras along the highway on the way out (decendants of Hearst's zoo), we did spot a few
of the local wildlife.After our tour, we said goodbye to the California coast and headed inland. We spent the night at a small campground in Techachapi, CA near a small airport.
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