Thursday, July 16, 2009

July 14, Day 25

We started this morning by driving closer to the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped at this little park by the bridge and sat for a few minutes looking at the bridge and Alcatraz. Then we ate a delicious breakfast of omelets, waffles, and pancakes in San Francisco at Peter D's restaurant. It was after noon before we even left San Francisco!We drove south to see the Winchester Mystery Mansion. We were backtracking a little, but we thought that it would be worth the trip, and it was. What a crazy house. It was 103 degrees in San Jose, and the fourth floor (top) in the house was terribly hot. Mrs. Winchester was married to son of the man who invented the Winchester repeating riffle. After her daughter and husband died she visited a medium in 
Boston who told her to go west and start building a house that would never be finished to appease the ghosts of the people who died from the gun that 
gave her all of her money. We
think that the medium probably had a relative who was in need of work in the San Jose area, so she set him up with Mrs. Winchester! She kept the carpenters busy 24/7 until her death. One set of stairs led to the ceiling, doors opened to
walls, cabinets opened to walls. It's a crazy twisted house. The modern water sprinklers that was added is seven miles long, so the house is very large, but the ceilings are very low, so it doesn't seem "grand". One of the pictures shows some of the turrets on the roof. She was really into spiderwebs and the number 13, and the guides pointed out such things throughout the house. Mrs. Winchester also had beautiful Tiffany Glass in windows throughout the house, and tons of it was found just stacked up in one of the storage rooms, so they have them displayed behind glass as you walk into the first storage area.

After that we drove north. Somehow, our GPS or us got mixed up and we ended up crossing the San Francisco Bay Bridge again! So five hours later, we were back where we had started that morning. We turned around, crossed the bay bridge again, and headed further north.

I wanted to drive on the scenic Highway 1, so we
headed that way. The views were gorgeous. The road runs right beside of the ocean. We stopped
once, and Molly got 
into the ocean. The rest of us just put our feet in the ocean because the water was so cold, but that didn't stop Molly. She had a great time.

We continued on this road and watched the sun go down on the Pacific Ocean. Gorgeous. We were looking for a place to spend the night, and this is the first time that I was beginning to be a little
concerned about finding a place, because this area of the coast is not developed. Then got to the town of Gualala and we
stopped at an inn. They had a room and we loved that we got to stay in a place that has such a cool name. You have to be happy when you get to stay at a place called Gualala! By the evening it had cooled off to 55 degrees because we had driven beside of the ocean. Quite a difference from the 103 temperature of San Jose of the morning.

1 comment:

  1. Glad you made it to the Mystery House! I loved that crazy thing. But it killed me that there were Tiffany stained glass panes just STACKED, unused. Sigh.

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