Passion and good judgment are horrible bedfellows.

Just after we’d risen beyond the crest of the Santa Lucia mountains framing the Big Sur coastline, thrilled to pieces with our surroundings, we’d seen the sign. Like a drunken sot who doesn’t realize he’s had enough, I asked for a double by agreeing to continue the route sixty additional miles to the Hearst Castle.

After all, it had been such a glorious morning, and the afternoon still sprawled out before us, resonating like the lingering chord of an ode to freedom. Isn’t spontaneity the hallmark of a great road trip?

From there the mileage signs ticked off slowly. Maybe I was coming down from the Big Sur high now, because Hearst Castle remained stubbornly distant.

We were still miles away when I caught sight of it. From the highway it was a fairy-tale twinkle atop the hill. Turrets and spires rose like an ancient cathedral of a walled mediaeval city. Excitement built as we made our final approach through pasturelands, golden with the sun’s mid-day light, punctuated by emerald stands of trees. At long last we turned off Hwy. 1 toward the castle.

What I didn’t expect, after such a wild and isolated trek, was the gigantic concrete parking lot. I hadn’t anticipated the visitor’s center, busloads of tourists, lines at multiple ticket booths. Besides being a repository for finery and a testament to over-indulgence, what was the historical/social/artistic meaning of this attraction again?

I suppose it’s fun for people just to witness how the other .000001% once lived. More and more I didn‘t like the looks of things, and that was even before I discovered we’d have a two and half hour wait before we could board the tour bus to begin a guided, narrated tour of the palace that would take another one and three quarter hours. Was this really the way I wanted to spend the remaining precious hours of my fabulous day in the rugged back-to-nature wilderness?

Since we’d come all this way and were invited to watch a video and visit a small museum with samples of the house‘s history, I gave the question more consideration. Coin-operated spy-glasses were set up to take a magnified look at the castle - still twenty minutes uphill from the visitors‘ center. We were encouraged to peruse the gift shop and it was here, leafing through the books that revealed the extravagant gaud of the palace that it struck me; I had no interest in going there. The glitz and over-the-top fantasy of the matter struck me entirely wrong somehow.

If the Castle were situated elsewhere, or if I’d approached from the south, driven up from Santa Barbara, perhaps it would have not been so jarring. But after coming from Big Sur the scene suddenly appeared to me distasteful. To move so abruptly from a world away into an example of a world way out there, was a step I was not yet willing to take.

Maybe next time.

Hearst Castle is the magnificent fantasy palace of William Randolph Hearst, the early 20th century’s answer to Rupert Murdoch and controversial muse for Orson Welles’s classic film Citizen Kane.

Overlooking the wild California coastline just before Big Sur, Hearst Castle stands imperiously atop the old camping grounds of the Hearst family.

Once the land passed into Hearst’s ownership, he envisaged more civilised surroundings for his visits, and in 1919 simply instructed the famed San Francisco architect Julia Morgan that he "would like to build a little something."

This great collaboration that was to last a lifetime created one of the world’s foremost private residences, always seemingly under construction, as Hearst changed his whims and added yet more outlandish and spectacular features to it.

Hearst renamed Camp Hill "La Cuesta Encantada"--the Enchanted Hill--and by 1947, Hearst and Morgan had created a massive estate of 165 rooms and 127 acres of gardens, terraces, and walkways--including two pools!

Hearst Castle is a cosmopolitan blend of differing styles. Casa Grande, the estate's beautiful main building, and three of the guest houses are of the Mediterranean Revival style, whereas the massive towers of Casa Grande were inspired by a Spanish cathedral. This blending and Hearst's amazing art collection combined so well that world-renowned architectural historian Lord John Julius Norwich was moved to say that "Hearst Castle is a palace in every sense of the word."

Before setting out for Hearst Castle, we had been warned to book ahead for tickets so as not to be disappointed, and duly did so. We were glad that we had, because despite being the morning of an off-season weekday, the gigantic mall-sized car park was already crowded and people without tickets were already faced with waits of well over an hour!

Everything about the Hearst Castle operation is massive, so much so that there is not just one tour, but five main ones, plus a host of other special-event tours! The main "Experience" tour for Hearst Castle novices explores most of the main features, including the gardens, the two swimming pools, and the ground floor of the Casa Grande; it lasts 1 hour and 45 minutes. This weighs in at a pricey $18, but is well worth every cent! In keeping with a man who was never one to turn down a fast buck, if you were to manage all the main tours, it would set you back a total of $78! No wonder they have trademarked "Hearst Castle" . . .