Gary and I like to mix it up a bit: on Sunday we visited a museum in Santa Barbara, Monday we jaunted up to Solvang and enjoyed the Danish - both the pastries and the cityscape. Today it’s time to - you guessed it - hike. We haven’t had a real hike for a while since we’ve been traveling and have been on places with flatter terrain. But, here we look out our RV windows and we are surrounded by mountains - or, rather, high steep hills and I hear ‘hike me, Nancy’ floating on the breezes. Luckily I did not hear this on Friday and Saturday when it was raining cats a dogs but I have heard it recently. So, today we hike.
I’ve been scanning the maps for a hike, knowing that we’ll probably only have the time (and the energy) for one good hike and found an interesting ruins just up the hills. It’s called Knapp’s Castle and it was built by George Knapp, founder of Union Carbide. In 1916 he bought a 160-acre property high in the hills above Santa Barbara in the Santa Ynez mountains and built his castle out of sandstone. Since we like a goal, or a turning point, for our hiking (or else we’ll just keep trekking on) we chose this. We heard that the hike was a challenge, that from the top of the hill were amazing views in all directions and we knew about the special ‘wow’ factor of the castle to explore.
The castle itself is no more since it was destroyed by a wildfire shortly after Knapp sold it for $10,000 in 1940. What remains is a goal for Santa Barbara hikers and photographers.
We got to the trail head about 9:30. Gary had made the ultimate sacrifice: hiking without his usual energy booster of donuts. Since the trail head was only a few miles from our campground, there were no donuts to be had. Of course, I reminded him that he had carbohydrate-loaded on danish yesterday in Solvaang. Gary explained to me that the half-life of danish was too short and might not sustain him today. But I told him I’d kick him in the butt if he didn’t start up the trail.
The hike was an unending uphill slog - which we knew it would be. The trail was a bit muddy from the rains we had over the weekend but dry enough that we weren’t clumping up the trail with globs of mud on our shoes.
This trail is so different from the desert trails we usually take since it was surrounded by trees, bushes, grasses and was much greener. We could see for miles with every step we took in the desert. Here our view was limited but every now and then we’d catch a glimpse of the hills across the valley - and the hills we still had to climb. But, then we’d look the other way and see how far we’d come and take in the views.
Finally we rounded a corner near the top and saw that the castle was just ahead - and still upward. But, with the goal in view, we slogged on. Directly below the castle, we saw these boats, amazing. At the top of a mountain is the last place I’d store a boat. There were tools around so we through that the current owner of the property might be working on them here. There’s also quite a bit of junk around the ‘castle’ itself and who knows who brought it here.
Finally, we walked the last few yards and there were the remains of the castle, perched high in the hills above the Santa Ynez Valley. The original ‘castle’ had 5 bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room, a pipe organ (a passion of Knapp’s) and a studio. There were also cottages for workers, a guesthouse and sleeping quarters for servants and a caretaker’s apartment. That was then and what remains are some walls, some steps leading to a lower level, several fireplaces and an amazing view across the valley.
We headed back down the mountainside, happy to be heading down. When we started down, we met a mountain biker who asked which trail was the right one to take to get down. We pointed the way and he took off. Half way down the hill, he passed us again and we expected to see him at the bottom. Sure enough, as we were taking off our hiking boots, he came off the trail again. He is a firefighter from LA who is up here for a long weekend to mountain bike. He told us that he had a great girlfriend who would shuttle him to the top of the his for his ride down, pick him up at the bottom and take him back to the top for another ride down. He took only 11 minutes to get down (much shorter than we took) but she took about 25 to get from the top to the bottom since the road would around the mountain a lot.
We also saw this old tree with this amazing burl.
Neat green hike with a real ‘wow’ at the end. On the way back to our campsite, we saw a flock of wild turkeys and one of the males couldn’t help but fan his feathers.
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