March 15, Monday
Well, we are on our way home through San Jose and the Napa Valley to Santa Rosa. Winchester Mystery house was our main stop today to get out of the car, see something interesting and disguise a “potty break” Actually, if you count them up...anyway...
Winchester house was build by the wife of the the famous manufacturer of the Winchester Rifle. Basically she seemed to be pretty normal until her daughter died, and her husband died shortly after the daughter. She felt she was cursed, so she sought out a phsycic who told her that she could ward off the evil sprits by building a house, and never stop building. She was told this would confuse the sprits and be repentance for all those who died a the hands of the Winchester rifle. Something like that.
The house is enormous. It has stairways leading to the ceiling, rooms that were built with no apparent purpose, and a door leading to nowhere. Its Victorian in style and huge. We see 110 rooms of the 160 room house which is spread over 6 acres. Today we walked over 1 mile in one house!. It has 47 fireplaces, tons of Tiffany stained glass windows, and 1 shower. Mrs. Winchester was supersticious so some of rooms have 13 windows, some windows have 13 specific design features and her main chandelier arrived from Germany with 12 lights on it so she had another added to make 13.
Quite an interesting house to tour, however they do not give you enough time to see everything. The craftsmanship of the paneled walls and trim on roof was spectacular, and all hand made. She had beautiful atriums in the house, and of course the stained glass windows were spectacular. There is a store room filled with them that have not been used. They call it the $25,000.00 store room because everying then cost her that much. All that “stuff” is now worth 10 times more as it is like new - never been used.
We weren’t allowed to take any pictures in the house - not even no flash photography, so I just have a few of the grounds. The house was interesting to see, but left you with an empty feeling. This poor soul was obviously tortured and tormented by guilt and may be a little crazy. The house seemed manic and chaotic, and it is sad to think of a person in that way, but I think the house and its design, or lack of it and the continuous building probably reflected her and her thoughts at the time.
We decide to take a tour of Napa Valley as we go north. Its very pretty area, with rolling hills and vineyards and winery’s it seems every 1\4 mile or so. This was quick drive as we had traffic on our tail, probably taking the route home to avoid the commercial highway, which was really busy today.
This is the last of our days on our trip, and are concentrating on getting home. We will be in Eureka for a day or so waiting for our passports ( I had dropped them in a parking lot in Barstow, California and the person who found them was kind enough to connect with us. We are hoping they arrive via courier in the next couple days, and then we will trek quickly home.
This trip started with a plan of where and what we were going to do, however changed quite a bit! As Lucas says he will call it the Grand miss adventure - mainly because we missed the Grand Canyon, which was very disappointing for all of us. But as we also say, “ hey, you can’t see everyting, you can’t do everything so lets enjoy what today brings”.
With that I say good night and talk with you later when we are home.
No comments:
Post a Comment