Getaway

Tuesday morning my friend Karin and I dumped the two dogs, a cooler, and a couple of overnight bags into the car and left the mountain and headed to the coast. Now the nice thing about going to the coast from here is that we have to go through wine country. However, we only stopped at one winery on the way down this year. Eagle's Castle is very different from the typical winery and I wanted Karin to see it. It looks like an old castle, is surrounded by a moat, and has very interesting period rooms and items. Yeah, I know, I should have remembered to take the camera out of the car. The good news was, since I still have E/C wine in my rack, we got away cheap.

We drove to Cambria, a little town with motels right along the beach. We stay at a motel where they allow their VIP's (very important pets) to bring their people.
There's a large lawn in the center of the complex for sitting out and drinking wine with your crackers & cheese. Too bad it was so foggy and damp when we got there. But it worked out. We went down the road to another winery in a little town called Harmony, population: 18. I heard they've had a population explosion and are up to 22.

We found a dog park on our drive back through Cambria and stopped and let our dogs get out and stretch their legs. The weather here was beautiful and we just sat back and let them enjoy themselves for awhile.

Katie and I have been coming to this particular "dog-friendly" motel since 2004 and it's a wonderful spot. Directly across the road from the motel is a boardwalk that runs along the beach which affords us long walks. There are large families of ground squirrels under and along the boardwalk which affords the dogs great excitement and spurts of increased activity.

We were so tired from the drive that we stayed in for dinner. We'd brought sandwiches thinking we'd stop along the way; fortunately that didn't happen so we were able to enjoy our chicken sandwiches with the cheese & crackers in our jammies.

Wednesday, before checking out, we walked the boardwalk for all we were worth. You'll see in the pic's, Katie's little legs (and the rest of her) are much shorter than Koda's. She walked two to three times Koda's walk. She's still tuckered. Here's a shot of Katie and Koda at a viewing point.
Katie found a tree stump that had petrified and made a great resting spot.
While we were checking out, Koda made friends with the resident (rescue) pup at the motel. (A little Mutt & Jeff here?)

Back into Cambria for lunch. That little town really decorates for the holidays. There were harvest and halloween decorations everywhere. Went to a little mexican restaurant that has a dog-friendly patio in the back and had lunch and then headed back north. Made a couple more stops and then hit the highway. The dogs slept almost all the way home. They weren't nearly as excited as the day before. You could almost hear them saying, "are we there yet?" We were home by 6:pm, dog-tired, pardon the pun, but refreshed and planning our next excellent adventure. Now we know the dogs travel well together and we travel well together. We felt a little cheated about not being able to sit out, watch the ocean, and do the wine & cheese, but the rest of the trip was so much fun. Katie and I slept like the dead last night and are ready to face the real world again this morning.