I left Vista and headed to a friend’s house in LA. I confess that I listened to Gertrude, the voice in my phone’s GPS, and went there, and don’t really know where I was, except that it wasn’t far to Pasadena where I was going to spend the night.

Jim has three dogs, including two red-nose pitbull rescues. Bowie, the young female, is, like Chico, not always great with other dogs. At first, we kept Chico out on the porch and Jim’s dogs indie, but Chico wasn’t happy, and he barked a lot, so we introduced the dogs. It was a little tense at first, but all the dogs did fine. Pretty soon, we could take them inside, into pretty close quarters.

The older male, Bradley (on the right), was not even interested in Chico, let alone any conflict.

Not exactly friends, but co-existing.

After a couple hours, Chico and I moved on to have dinner and spend the night with my long-time friends Christina and Mick. This being southern California, our thoughtful hosts took us to a Mexican restaurant with a dog-welcoming patio. In fact, they were just wrapping up a benefit evening for the local shelter, and many people had come for dinner with their dogs. We sat a little off to the side and Chico was very well behaved.

Next morning they had to go to work, so Chico and I went for a walk before we got in the car to head to Santa Cruz.

There are some lovely houses on Chris & Micky’s street.

And the air was pretty darned clear, for LA.

After a long drive up I 5, we arrived in Santa Cruz and went to my very, very, very-most favorite supermarket in the whole world (at least, the parts of it I have been to) – Shopper’s Corner.

Chico and I are fortunate enough to be able to camp on part of a forty acre parcel west of the UCSC campus while we visit various friends in the area. It’s sort of like the classic Santa Cruz destination, the Mystery Spot, bit with a peek of the ocean. Lots of redwoods, some sun, plenty of room for a dog. And boy howdy, is that dog happy here.