The Great Dog Road Trip
Because we are insane, we actually did drive from Virginia to California and back, with one dog outbound and three dogs on the homeward trip. The goal was to pick up my beloved late goddaughter Tonda’s pugs, who we are adopting. Attempts to get them from California to Virginia have been ongoing since last fall. Dogma, our border collie mix, up until then the Only Dog, went with us.
We mostly didn’t stop much for touristy things because we were on a deadline, since I had already booked a talk at my hometown library in Ojai on the Hollywood blacklist and my novel about it, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? before the trip became pug transport. But we did make a side trip through the Vicksburg National Military Park on the site of the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, since we were going right past it. It has over 1400 memorials including elaborate Victorian edifices erected by states in honor of their divisions and plaques for individual commanders on both sides.
We failed to locate my great-grandfather who is there somewhere but did take pictures of some of the monuments and a fine collection of nineteenth-century whiskers.
We stopped in Austin to collect my goddaughter Jen and visit Doug and Lorna, her parents, then took Jen to California to collect her husband’s car, stranded in San Ramon as the result of previous elaborate attempts to organize a pug-collection route. I was struck again by exactly how much of Texas there is.
Love’s truck stops almost all have dog parks and we patronized nearly every one. This is one of the most brilliant marketing ploys ever conceived.
We began plotting our route from one Love’s to the next.
Once we got to the desert, Dogma was horrified to find that she was expected to pee on gravel. She’s a Virginia girl and expects grass. I think she was as happy as I was when we crossed the Tehachapis out of the desert down to rolling hills dotted with the live oaks that for me will always be the sight of home.
Our plan was to stay exclusively at Motel Chain I Won’t Name, which allows multiple pets. Unfortunately, said chain is not all it is cracked up to be. One was adequate, one had no towels, looked to be in danger of imminent collapse, and was probably haunted, and one clearly had not changed the sheets since the last customer.
Still, the California part of the trip was blissful, just to be home again. We picked up the pug boys, Darcy and Heathcliff, in Fresno and had a lovely visit with Tonda’s father Steve, my old friend Tim, and a bevy of Tonda’s friends I hadn’t met before.
Dogma may have been surprised that we took the pugs with us when we left Steve’s house but we told her they were sheep and she was in charge of them.
After we collected the pug boys in Fresno, we took Highway 33, the old country road, past the oilfields and up and down the hills into Ojai.
We spent a week in Ojai, where we both grew up, and found a dog daycare for Dogma and the boys. I gave a talk about my Hollywood blacklist novel, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, set in a thinly disguised version of Ojai, at the Ojai Library.
Then we went to the Ojai Art Center where we met in 1966.
Ojai is always going to be my heart home.
The old catholic church, St. Thomas Aquinas, is now a museum, and only a still-consecrated church in my Ojai novels, because I can. It’s a wonderful museum though.
Our motel was in Carpinteria, a 40-minute drive from Ojai each day over Casitas Pass, a beautiful, winding, two-lane road through the hills. It was transitioning to a Vagabond Inn property while we were there, necessitating a strange check-out-and-check-back-in-again procedure that none of the staff could accomplish due to new software. New software always helps any situation. It was full of dogs. Our neighbors down the walkway left their door open on the chain so their Pomeranian could look out and bark. The pugs were firm about sleeping on the bed so I gave them a bath in the motel tub.
We dropped the dogs at day care every morning halfway between Carpinteria and Ojai, and saw one of Tony’s oldest friends, Lynne, his niece Lily, and had dinner with his nephew Eric and wife Jennie who kindly let us bring the dogs to mingle with theirs. New/old Ojai friend Drew came out for my talk at the library. So many people we wish we weren’t so far away from.
We drove by the Taj, a magical place where we had an apartment for 18 months in the early nineties. It’s grown a huge privacy hedge. The old picture is what it (and we) looked like when we lived there. It was our Christmas card that year.
On the return trip we discovered La Quinta Inns, which are run by Wyndham, and allow two dogs per room, and three if you plead nicely (or don’t mention the third). They were lovely. Dog-friendly rooms are at the back with a separate entrance so you needn’t parade said dogs through the lobby. Or show them how many dogs you actually have.
We set out through Santa Paula to catch I-40. I did some research years ago at the Santa Paula Oil Museum, housed in this impressive edifice. The murals (elsewhere in SP) are new, I think.
We staggered home bloody but unbowed and a day late after we realized we were burned out and took an extra day for the return tip. Traveling with three dogs takes half again as much time as with no dogs. The pug boys traveled in crates to keep them from bouncing around the van like ping pong balls, and so had to be uncrated, walked, encouraged to pee, and crated again at what seemed like five-minute intervals. There was so much dog hair in the van that we lost our security deposit. The people at the car rental were apologetic about it, but I’m surprised they didn’t charge us more.
Happily at home now, with a book to finish, another book’s copy edits to review and argue with, and a third’s OCR text to proofread. I have two new interns. They snore.
Damn, no wonder you're always a little bit homesick! Ojai truly is magical! Are the pugs full grown? They do fit nicely into that one dog puffer.
Welcome home!
Made me so happy to read this. But I am left wondering if Dogma still thinks D &. H are sheep. (Perhaps she's right?)