Team Rode: Paso Robles and Hearst Castle

Paso Robles is about a half an hour from the coast and is the home of the Mid state fair for California, a ton of Vineyards, the Firestone Walker brewery and most important of all Jamie, Marty and Keely Smith. Jamie is a friend of mine from college, Marty is his wife and Keely is the boss, she is 9 months old. Jamie works as the marketing director for the Firestone Walker brewery, Marty works as the Manager of the Firestone vineyard. They took pity on us and took us in for the night, fed us a great meal, pumped us full of wine and beer and gave us an extremely comfortable place to sleep.
The next morning we had breakfast in town, visited the Firestone Vineyard and Brewery sampled the products and even picked up a few bottles for our own collection. We hated to leave so soon, but Jamie and Marty arranged for us to take a tour of the Hearst Castle and never wanting to pass up an opportunity to see something we were off, back to the coast.
The Hearst Castle is the standing example of extravagance. Construction started in the 1920's and took 15 years to complete. The castle was built by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul with a ton of cash. The castle has 165 rooms, 4 guest houses, two unbelievable swimming pools and even a private zoo. Hearst had the castle decorated with items from all over the world and every different time period, and in the 1920s and 30s that was quite a task. The castle had a private airstrip and a private dock so Hearst could bring in his guests and all of his supplies.
The tour of the castle was unbelievable and looked more like a very high-end museum than a house that someone once had wild parties in, inviting the who's who of society at the time. Hearst eventually died and the trust gave the castle to the state of California who turned it into a state park that gets over a million visitors every year.
We finished our tour and continued south, we made it to Pismo Beach where we actually camped on the beach. We had to drive about 2 miles down the sandy beach and growing up in land locked states made the drive very interesting. We only got kinda stuck once, but we finally found a place to camp about 20 feet from the water. We sat on the beach, watched the waves, ate dinner and watched the sun go down.