Shame On Me

It's been two weeks since I last posted. I totally suck. I admit it. But listen people... I have been swallowed up by the peach fuzzy goodness of California. We have been out doing so much stuff that I just straight up have not had it in me when we get home at night to write. Or to even think. I pretty much eat and go to sleep for like ten hours.

A quick recap would go something like this... we left Brook and Mike's ranch and went to Felton, CA which is right outside of Santa Cruz and in the redwood forest. It rocked. I loved Santa Cruz and I loved funky little Felton. Our camp was right next door to a redwood state park so we did a lot of exploring in there. We had a few really killer dinners out in Santa Cruz. If you are interested in vegetarian fare and are ever in Santa Cruz try out Malabar on Front St. They have a really far out Indian fusion sort of menu. We also ate at Dharma's which is an old school vegetarian place with a couple of dozen fabulous choices on their menu. The farmer's market in Felton provided us with THE BEST GRAPES I have ever eaten in my whole life. They were red muscat dessert grapes and they were heaven. I am forever ruined for regular old grocery store grapes.

OK... here is a smattering of photos from Santa Cruz and the redwoods etc. to give you an idea of how beautiful it is there...












OK. So we left Santa Cruz a few days ago and are now set up in Carmel Valley. People... for real.... Carmel is one of the best spots on the planet. It is so gorgeous. The houses in the village are so freakin' cute you feel like you are living inside a quaint little hobbit snow globe when you are walking around the neighborhoods in town. This is the town we will be closest to once we get set up camp hosting in Big Sur. Do you want to know the best part? Carmel is the most dog friendly town in the whole country. Hands down. Dogs are happenin' around here. Dog's are allowed. Dogs are encouraged. Dogs are workin' it at very corner like they own they joint. So that being said Rudy is in hog heaven here. He has run his little ass off on the town beach and has been out to eat and into stores. For those of you female readers who are into clothes... I can take Rudy into the Anthropologie store with me here. How nuts is that? If I had money falling out of my back end I could buy him a cashmere sweater in every hue... and a hand tooled leather collar for $100. A lot of the restaurants have doggie menus available. We are going to eat tomorrow at a place that will serve him his very own meatloaf. So that should be properly dumb fun.

Again... here's a whole bunch of pictures to sum it up. We are here for about another week so there will be lots more to follow... (for some of you the most exciting image here will be the one actually documenting the beard phase of Billy McLane... you really have to see it to believe it.)












And in case you have not had enough of me and my photos yet... here are some from a drive we took up the coast the other day on Hwy 1. Now I am pretty much just showing off.










How am I doin'? Are you throwing up pictures of the California coast, tree bark, rocks, my dog and pelicans yet? Good. That should do it for a few days right?

Grounded

So yeah... Rudy has taken to life on the ranch just like a fly to shit. Literally. We tried to take him out last night for a few hours to walk the ranch and shoot photos at sundown and we ended up with him once again attacking a herd of cattle and then jumping into a shallow muddy cow pasture pond and THEN he started rolling in fresh cow shit. Let me give you a quick visual run down. Here is the moment he decided to disobey me a shoot back down the hill after the cows...



I had to run all the way back down there after him and wade through thorny weeds and fresh poop to grab him up. We got back to the top of the hill and he spotted the pond and WHAM! Off he went again. I think this first picture sums up the luxurious moment he had by the side of the pond.






Can you even stand it? Make way for The E Coli Kid! He is seriously more like a pig than a dog. Disgusting. Do you see the copious amounts of poop he is intimately involved with there? Yeah.

So we spent the rest of the time walking around trying to keep him off and away from us. We got some cool photos even with him cramping our style.







When we got back to the house I pinned Rudy down and shot him with the freezing cold water from the hose for awhile trying to wash him off. Pay back is a bitch little dude... nobody gets to come in to the trailer covered in poo. We had to put him in the shower and scrub him to get satisfactory results. He was beyond misery by the time it was over.

He also chewed up Riley's Ken doll today. So... that being said... he is grounded. Riley was stroking Ken's chewed up arms saying "It's OK Ken... I'm sorry." I tried to explain to her that while Ken may look a mess he still had a smile on his face and I was sure he felt fine. She was not convinced.

Little Big Man

Sorry I have not posted much lately. I just have not been feelin' very blog chatty. We have left Billy's family and moved out an hour or so west to my friend Brook's ranch. Brook was my best friend when I was a little kid. She lived next door and we had sleep overs almost every weekend, collected stickers together and did the usual basic dumb kid stuff together. When we got a little older (meaning around the 7th and 8th grade) we started sneaking out at night with other kids from the neighborhood and we would all creep around in the woods feeling like we were getting away with murder for being out in the wee hours of the night. It was good times. I have a lot of fun memories from those days.

Brook and I had not seen each other in twenty years (groan.... we are getting OLD) and we have been looking forward to hooking up once Billy and I arrived in California. So here we are. She and her husband Mike and their two girls Riley and Taylor live on a huge cattle ranch near Napa Valley. It's just beautiful. We are spending the week with them before heading to the coast.




Last night Billy, Rudy and I walked the ranch in the late afternoon. I think it's like 300 acres of land and obviously there is a herd of cattle roaming around on it. We had an escort for a good portion of the walk which you can see represented in the new banner up top. That is a picture of me screaming at Rudy to leave the cows alone. He was right in their face barking like a mad man. They pretty much did nothing about it but I was worried one of them would turn around and give him a good solid kick to the face. So there I am yelling my head off and all three animals are standing there quietly regarding me as though I were nuts. Nice. Maybe I am nuts. Rudy seems to think he is quite capable of taking on these animals which are 42 times his size and weight. Like he is the bad ass cowboy who just rode in on the ranch.





Rudy is having a blast here so far. There are two other dogs... Buddy and Presley. Presley is a working cattle dog and Buddy is a giant old goofball. Rudy and Buddy made instant friends in such a way that it was just plain stupid to watch. I will try to grab a few pictures of them today to share on here so you can see what I mean. Mostly they chase each other around in circles, around a car or the yard or the sofa or around you or me or anyone or thing that is near them. Buddy has a long beard sort of in the style of an old Chinese wise man. Dogs are funny.



Billy is really stoked to paint the landscape here. He is starting work on a scene today. This is the California stuff he has been wanting to paint for years. I am so glad to have the chance to visit with my oldest friend (not that she is old... it's that we have known each other so long... duh.) It should be a great week. I will try to post lots of pics. I hope y'all are having a fun three day weekend here in the states.

Finally

So we have been in Cali for a week or so now. We have been talking about getting out here for so many months that I am thrilled to finally just be here. We drove in through Reno and down out of the mountains in to the Sacramento area where we are staying with family for a few weeks before we go settle in at Big Sur for the winter.

This area of California is where they grow everything! EVERYTHING! I bet you did not know that everything came from one place... but it does and it is all right here. It's called the delta region and it runs along the banks of The Sacramento River all they way out to the bay area near San Francisco. The roads are all built on top of levees and for as far as you can see it is pear orchards or safflower fields or something else edible. It is still quite hot here during the day (90's and sometimes over 100) but at night it dips nicely down in to the low 60's with a great breeze.

We have the peanut parked in the drive at Billy's Dad's new place and we have a pretty good amount of shade for most of the day so that helps keep the heat at bay until late in the afternoon.



We have had more emergency vet visits with Rudy while here and these have been pricey ones including x-rays and probes and pills. While staying at the Dude Ranch in Utah Rudy sustained a few injuries... a fox tail in his paw which became infected and he sort of blew out his back left knee from playing too vigorously for three solid days. So we have had to deal with this...



They actually told us to keep him on crate rest for one whole week. Yeah. Crate rest. For a week. Because Rudy will so gladly be zipped up tight in his hot little crate and lay still for a whole week. So that part has been difficult. I took him back to the vet yesterday for a re-check and the guy said we could ease off the cone and see how he does with leaving his paw alone. So far he is doing OK. We also have to give him pills twice a day and it has become increasingly impossible to do. No matter how you try to disguise those pills he knows they are there and will not eat them. We have tried cheese, sausage, chicken, rice... finally the only thing that works is to glob them up in a wad of peanut butter and stick it to the roof of his mouth. But even that trick is beginning to fail as he has developed an expert way of mashing that wad of PB right out of his mouth. Sounds pleasant eh?

OK. I will leave you with some pics. We went to the Sacramento farmer's market on Wednesday and it kicked ass. We bought a ton of stuff and it was all so wonderfully delicious. I will even go so far as to say it was... magically delicious. We got a peach that was 13 inches in circumference. Ridiculous!





Here's a couple of shots of Billy with his little sisters Coco (Caroline) and Lauren shootin' some hoops out in the drive way from the other night.






And here is what Rudy was doing while they were playing B-ball. He felt very left out and sulky. He literally sat down with his back to them and shot the occasional sad look back over his shoulder. Poor little Tootis.



Anyway... we are having a great time visiting with the girls. Coco is so funny she gets me laughing so hard that I make the ugly cry face. It's weird to see them now as teenagers as they were just little kids (around 6 and 8) when I first met them. Lauren will be driving before the year is out so watch out America.