Abandoned Hilltop House and Forest Fire !!!

A few days ago we took a hike to the abandoned Hilltop House in Apple Valley, CA. This was really nice unique and elite mansion-like house overlooking the entire city. It was at one time an over $6 million dollar investment with an indoor/outdoor pool. It was a place many Hollywood celebrities would go to get away from busy city life. The hike was a long and steep trip for us and our 10 yr old even got sick once we made it to the top of the hill due to the heat exhaustion. We took many pictures and explored the old crumbling house for some time. Due to the original driveway being completely blocked off by tall fencing and the original way up being too steep to return down, we had a long trip back down along the entire fence line after attempting to slip through the front gates to get out with no luck. The only regret that I have is that I wish we would have waiting to explore this historical site on a nice cool fall day, rather then a hot summer day. After exploring the home researched the house and it's history online and I will be including a link to some of what we discovered. I will be including several of the pics that we took of the home today and pictures of the original house and owner. Enjoy and I hope you find exploring this piece of history as interesting as we did. http://paradiseleased.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/newts-paradise-apple-valleys-spectacular-hilltop-house/ Lastly, due to a fire in the mountains here near were we are, we had a large amount of smoke covering the skies two days ago. I was a bit scary for me because I've never experience a large fire like that being too close for comfort. I will include a few pictures of the smoke filled skies at the end of the pics on here. I believe the fire is 25% contained at this point, so that is good news. Enjoy!