Homestead Creations

Bishop Castle was not what I had expected, but what a pleasant surprise! I clearly had not done my research and didn’t realize it was not a completed castle you would be touring, but instead, an “in progress” work of art that is not to code as far as safety is concerned. With that being said, if you keep your kids close by, this place is pretty magical and a super fun stop if you have an extra hour or two to spare (driving time not included).

The stairs in this picture, although slippery at the time due to snow, were relatively safe, but the higher up you got, they turned into grated stairs and some of them had chunks out of them or were missing altogether. Sounds worse than it was, it was a minor safety hazard in comparison to others. Pretty easy to just skip over a step if needed. The staircases were very narrow though so it is a one person at a time situation. If you go on a busy day I’m sure there is quite the backup. It was quite amusing even when we were there trying to find a place to step aside and let people by. Part of the adventure we say!

The girls were having so much fun opening windows and doors and pretending to be princesses. That was my favorite thing about the place, you get to actually PLAY in the space; it was very fun to just have free rein of a castle!

It truly is breathtaking. You can see that the ground is wet in there, is the place beautiful? Yes! Is it properly sealed? Not so much. 🙂 Some places were leaking worse than others, luckily this main space was not too wet.

You can see boards missing in this picture. It’s a good depiction of the condition of the castle. I wouldn’t let little kids stray at all.

We had already noticed boards missing and some places without guard rails, but this was a moment we realized she had found this little cubby area that had no guard rails around and drops off to an elevator shaft. haha, needless to say it was after this we kept her close by us for the remainder of our time there.

The elevator shaft. Top right of the picture is the hole from the cubby area she had found. To reiterate, not a safe place for kids to necessarily run around on their own, but if you keep the littles close by, it’s a super fun place to explore.

Not a working bell but cool to come across all the same. This treasure is found as you starting climbing to the highest peak. This is where it started to really get wet. There are places during this climb that have STEEP drop offs where full length windows (maybe they are even meant to be doors eventually?) are completely open. Around this time is when my husband started to feel a little uneasy with our youngest children and took them back down. The oldest two and myself continued to make our way up very slowly and carefully.

We were SO close to the very top at this point but the picture does NO justice to the amount of snow dumping in on us, our son had already stopped and was waiting down a ways for us to come back to him and so I called it and we started heading back down. The walls were so cold but the stairs were slippery at this point and so we took our time getting down and our hands were FREEZING by the time we made it to the bottom due to trying to hold one to the walls for balance where we could.

Once we got to the bottom and met up with my husband, he pointed out which window we had stopped in and we realized we literally one one more twist of stairs to go and we would’ve been at the top. DANG! We were bummed we didn’t just push through, but with that being said, I’m glad I listened to my gut with the conditions we were in. You can see those drop offs from this picture too. Those windows have nothing in them to prevent you from falling out. Be careful! Definitely suggest going when its not raining or snowing for a safer experience, but either way, it was worth the stop and made for a super fun adventure we won’t be forgetting anytime soon!

I’m doing this super out of order, but make sure you don’t walk straight through this entrance. Of to your right hand side is an entrance…

Make your way up the stairs to a little room and then over a bridge to just in front of the castle.

Hopefully you’re not claustrophobic. 😉

All in all, a great stop! We all agreed we’d love to go back on a dry day and do more exploring! I didn’t even cover what all there is to see on the ground level, so definitely plan on having at least an hour to walk around. There are port-a-potties down where you park.