Winchester Mystery House
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2010
1
308
366
Trip End
Jul 13, 2012
Where I stayed
Murphy's car park, Morgan Hill
San Jose, California
Monday, December 5, 2011
Here, we popped in to the Winchester Mystery House and booked on the combined Grand Mansion & Behind the Scenes tour. It is a really odd house with stairs leading nowhere and windows on the floor. The story goes that the owner, the daughter in law to the Winchester Rifle manufacturer, wanted to make up for the lives taken by the rifle, so she visited a medium to find out what to do. This medium said that she should build a house but never stop building, if she wanted to calm the spirits of those killed. So she bought a house and the building didn't stop until her death, in her eighties. Looking around the house, past all the oddities, some of things she did were really ahead of her time. She installed underfloor heating, a shower and floating foundations, that saved the building from the 1906 earthquake and all this done in the 1880's. She was a very intelligent women, if a little odd, but we liked her, as her lucky number was 13. We left the mansion and drove to Walmart, in the vain hope that we may be able to park there. Yet again, we were turned away, so we headed out of San Jose, (after cooking dinner in their car park), to the next Walmart down the US101 and crossed our fingers. Again Walmart said no, but this time they did say there was a car park of a closed down store we could park in. So spot found, we washed and settled in. We then watched the movie, Monsters vs Aliens and went off to bed.
6th Dec.
Up at around 7am after being woken up again in the early hours, by Dean needing the toilet. When we get home, I'm going to have to get him a bigger bag! Woke up to a mild frost but it soon warmed up and after breakfast we drove off to Pinnacles National Monument.
