Neptune Pool, Hearst Castle (1978)

Summer 1978 — This week I have a few final slides from the last leg of our Canadian road trip, plus images from a visit to Hearst Castle that same year. I originally posted these pictures in early March 2017 for Memory Monday Week 16 and Week 17.

First, though, I do want to (again) tell the story that I originally shared back in 2017 of something that happened while we were camping at the KOA outside Victoria.

Our campsite was #1, right on the end of the row and not far from a very nice (and otherwise empty) little beach, which we decided to explore. It was Saturday evening, and we’d had a long day of walking and exploring in the beautiful city of Victoria.

I approached the rocky end of the beach and noticed a small boy’s brown jacket lying on the ground. Picking it up, I could see that the inside label had the name Alvin Thomas written on it along with his address on Mt Newton X Road. We decided we didn’t want the little boy to get in trouble for losing his jacket; so we climbed into our camper and set out to return it to the named address.

Mom said she knew where the road was, so off we went, rolling down Highway 17 toward Victoria. After a few  miles, she suddenly recalled where she’d seen that street name — we had to turn the car around and go back the way we came. It turned out that Mt Newton X Road was the street our KOA was on. The address we were looking for was on an Indian reserve… and the house was almost directly behind our camping spot! Nobody was home, so we left the little jacket hanging on the doorknob and quietly slunk back to camp.

Aboard the Queen of Alberni

After spending a couple of days in and around Victoria, we awoke at 7 AM on Sunday and drove a short way up Vancouver Island to Swartz Bay, where we caught a B.C. Ferry heading to Tsawassen, near Vancouver. The crossing took 90 minutes; and although we did spend some time checking out the boat, the wind was very strong, and the ferry rolled and pitched quite a lot — so much of our time was spent sitting inside, enjoying the view.

A windy day

View from the Maritime Museum, Vancouver, B.C.

Sadly, I have no photographs from our visit to the Maritime Museum or the Centennial Museum near Vancouver, but I did write down a few of the highlights, such as exploring the arctic supply and patrol ship St. Roch in her drydock.  One of the details I recorded was climbing down into the crew’s mess and seeing the “ship’s fiddle” — it was “frames of wood which fitted down over the table in a storm, to keep the food from sliding off in rough weather and seas.”

By Monday we were driving south once more, crossing the border and passing through Seattle, where I caught a glimpse of the Space Needle for the first time. I was disappointed, after arriving back in Washington State, that we had forgotten to stock up on crumpets while in Canada. We arrived in Olympia on Tuesday and took a tour of the State Capitol building.

I have absolutely no idea where (or why) my Dad took the photo above; maybe it had to do with the Volkswagen bus visible on the left? Whatever the reason, he liked the image enough to include it in the carousel wheel with the rest of our vacation pictures!

I can’t recall when we took this tour of Hearst Castle, although the slides seem to have been developed around the same time as those from our Canadian trip. I think this may have been my second visit to San Simeon; but since I haven’t been back since the late 1970s, I think I’m well overdue for another trip!

Next week, a few images from San Francisco in 1978.