Saturday morning Elrohir and Lenneth, their parents and nephew picked us up in the neatest decked-out vacationing van I’ve ever seen… two tvs, headset ports, a SNES plug and station, cup holders, storage everywhere… it was like being in a private jet. ^_~ We drove out past McCloud and were let into Wyntoon, 66,000 acres of forest and rivers where William Randolph Hearst enlisted Julia Morgan to build him a private getaway and refuge for himself and Marion Davies during WWII. (She also built the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California.) What he ended up with was the most enchanting Bavarian-style village of chalets, all nested along the McCloud River, with every amenity you could ask for. Two of the cottages are painted with murals depicting fairy tales, Snow White and Rose Red and Cinderella. With four chalets, most three stories high, and every bedroom with a private bathroom, Hearst could take 60-100 of his friends with him to this spot. Water tinkles from 17th-century Germanic fountains on carefully-kept-up green expanses of lawn. It was magical. We were able to stroll around the grounds, and the caretaker allowed us inside two of the cottages, Angel House (never finished by Morgan, and later finished using her original blueprints) and River House, the key feature being the gobs of hand-painted French wallpaper. If you know anything about Hearst and San Simeon (which Morgan also designed), you know him as a collector of European antiquities, and both houses we visited were dripping inside with Germanic treasures. Every guest room was enchanting, with monogrammed sheets and fresh-baked cookies under glass domes. You have to understand how humorous it was to be in the equivalent of a private five-star hotel, in the heart of Siskiyou County. Only a local would see why this is so darn funny.

We picnicked on Crispi’s sandwiches and snacks outside Tea House, by then I was on film roll #3… ^^; After a leisurely lunch, we continued down the river to Hearst’s personal residence while at Wyntoon, nestled on a peninsula where the McCloud River takes a bend that sends it back almost 180 degrees in the opposite direction… aptly named The Bend. I saw at once why they called it “the Castle”, the Gothic architecture, the domed ridged cathedral-style ceiling over the dining room… Lenneth and I were squealing over the entire property, the entire time, but it seemed we did some extra squealing here, glimpsing a gigantic Renaissance-era painting through a window here, spotting quatrefoil fabric on a sofa there. Hog heaven for both of us, I’d say. By that time it had gotten unbearably hot, and after sitting by the lovely (spotless) pool for a while, we decided to avoid temptation and head back to “civilization”. We stopped at the McCloud Candy Shoppe and got more snacks, and gave their freshly-opened coffee and soda bar in the back a whirl (except me, sunburn and heat had made me regret what I’d eaten and drank thus far, so I declined and settled for ice water.)

We got back home and flaked for a few hours, then Saturday evening had E&L back over for dinner (an inexpensive yet tasty ham, mashed potatoes and salad) and entertainment (a whopping four straight hours of The Prisoner, looks like we’ll make it to the end of the series with time to spare.) Sunday morning we got up and headed back to McCloud for the McCloud Flea Market, an annual event of antiques, cheap junk and good food. Good food included barbequed, thin-sliced tri-tip sandwiches with grilled onions and peppers, and later, a grilled italian sausage sandwich. :9 We pigged out. Didn’t buy anything though. As we were leaving we ran into my parents in their riding leathers, and hung out with them briefly before heading back to MS. In the afternoon we met E&L at the office and kept them company while Elrohir worked overtime… and gamed for a record-breaking eight hours. It was fun. I felt really good about my role-playing this time, more in character than I’d been yet! And I got Johan’s character to go to “church” with me, a festival of my nature deity Mielikki (sp?) He saw his first dryad, it was cool. ^^;

So far today I made a very cool code change that I keep forgetting to put on the Serenitatis update blog: I fixed it so that all galleries on my site use a configuration file in PHP to determine what the large images directory name is, so that instead of hours of recoding to get all the URLs replaced, I can now rename the directory, upload one file, and have all links instantly change. This should cut down on direct linking quite a bit, as I can now change the directory name monthly, weekly… even daily if I see fit. I’m glad I thought of it, and even more glad to see it work!