El Rancho Grande

Spent three nights at the Thousand Trails Rancho Oso park in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. It's a delightful little (really, not so little) 400-acre actual ranch/RV park where Hollywood cowboy actors like Tom Mix would hang out in the 1930s and 40s.

Thousand Trails touts its location as "nestled in the spectacular Santa Ynez Mountains." Unfortunately, a fire roared through these mountains two years ago and instead of a national forest, some of it is a national burn area. It will be years before the trees on the hillsides come back, if ever. But again, like all Thousand Trails, it's free to us, so.....

We've been receiving calls, emails, telegrams and smoke signals regarding that thing on the back of Paul's truck.

Yes, it's our new camper shell. A great addition as we can throw all kinds of crap in it. Like we don't have enough crap in it already. Remember, you just expand to fill the space that's available.

But it looks good and sleek with the trailer and especially in a setting like this, the Los Padres National Burn Area.

Thousand Trails has turned this classic historic ranch into something of a tourist attraction. You can stay in an RV or these cabins with the look of an old west main street.

You can stay in a covered wagon "tent" or sleep in the trash can.

Wealthy Santa Barbarans board their horses here and come up to ride through the national burn area. Thousand Trails members can ride for $40 an hour. Not being a horseback riding fan, I think I'd rather ride a Humvee filled with buffed jarheads outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. I do like the Marine Corps. Oooh-rah.

Yep, it's an old ranch, pardner.

This is Paul with his new punk hairdo. He looks like a rooster. Daisy has one to match but we couldn't get her to sit still for the shot.

Since we don't ride horses and Thousand Trails has no TV reception, they do have some pretty good movies to rent. We saw "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." Daisy loved it. And we like it, too. Cute film. Recommend it.

Also rented "Marley and Me" (this is the scene at the end). Can't really recommend this one because it's more about the two sorry main characters rather than the dog. But it did bring a tear to my eyes....

And here's Daisy eating my tear-stained Kleenex. Paul pulled it out of her butt later that evening.

Also rented "The Changeling" -- highly recommend it. "The Reader"--a pretty good movie. Paul like the nudity. And "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", a pathetic attempt to remake "Forrest Gump". A weird story that went on forever. Last, the latest "Indiana Jones" movie. Ay caramba, this has to be one of the worst movies ever.

Spent a day down in Santa Barbara. A beautiful coastal community.

Unfortunately, this was the week of Santa Barbara's annual fiesta that draws hundreds of millions of people up from LA. Daisy was freaked out by all the noise and bodies so I have her in a choke-hold to calm her down.

We found a restaurant called "The Fish House" that wasn't too crowded. Paul had fish and chips. I had soup and a small salad since I'm trying to lay off the carbs. I hate this diet.

Paul explaining the finer points of the camper shell to Daisy.

All sorts of wheeled contraptions are allowed on the Santa Barbara waterfront...

And so are pit bulls.

But martinis aren't so we're leaving.

California has too damn many people and we still have more than half the state to go before we hit Oregon. Makes me want to scream. Living in California is so...2005 (that's when we moved to Arizona).

Maliboozed

Day nine on the road enjoying a three-night stay at the Malibu Beach RV Park above the Pacific Coast Highway overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We would like to make some smart-ass comment about the place but in fact it's high end and far above our usual lowlife layovers. But at $80-$140 a night you get what you pay for. We're used to either free parks or paying no more than $30 a night.

We thought Malibu a nice place to introduce Daisy to beer but she's sticking to wine. That's our girl!

The only negative we might have about this park is that the owners cram sixty pounds of you-know-what into a ten-pound sack. Trailers are packed in here like sardines. But it's quiet, comfortable and populated by lots of Europeans running around half naked. Always worth a peek or two.

We think Daisy's not so much disinterested in beer as she is distracted by a passing naked Swede. Woops...there goes Paul sneekin' a peek.

I've made an important discovery. You can get more wine into one of those blue plastic cups than you can in a conventional wine glass. You have to make fewer trips to the tap. It might look small in my hand from a distance, but it actually holds half a gallon.

Sunday was a mostly relaxing day. Starting with a "Daisy walk" trying to get her to unload the Fritos, Cheetos, pork rinds and pub mix we've been feeding her.

One other negative: we didn't pay for an ocean view. We have to look through a couple of rows of trailers to see a little of the Pacific.

We booked what is called a "mountain view". Sounded good but in fact it's a hill directly behind us with a few snaggy ice plants clinging to the dirt. Daisy couldn't care less.

For Daisy the day quickly turned downhill when Paul threw her into the tub for her weekly bath because she was about to visit her relatives up the coast.

Every summer our friends Brian and Denise lease a beach house here in Malibu to escape the oppressive Florida heat and humidity. It's always great to see them and at the same time escape the confines of our 140-square-foot walk-in closet. Today we enjoyed their generous hospitality in this 4,000 square-foot beach house. More important, that's Paul's Tundra with his new camper shell. You can throw all kinds of crap in it.

This summer house even has a pedigree as it's owned by Malibu's Pepperdine University. It was bequeathed to the school some years ago by a wealthy benefactor who was a member of the Wells Fargo family. Love them benefactors.

And love our friends Brian and Denise because to be welcome here is always a special treat.

Daisy had the full run of the place and only threw up once on the expensive carpet. Good dog.

Suppose the only downside here aside from some morning fog is the heavy surf eating away at the coastline. This property takes on an almost Normandy Beach-like flavor with sandbags piled high to stem the erosion. But again, Daisy couldn't care less. She's too busy fighting Denise for the wine opener.

A good thing we recovered the wine opener because friends showed up--folks in the television and movie industry down here. Great people and enjoyable company. We had a wonderful day with a top-notch catered lunch, superb wine and champagne then sent out for pizzas for dinner. So much for the diet. After this trip I'm having my jaws wired shut.

Paul took a quick break to check out the chicks on the beach.

And Denise is wondering, "Where's Daisy? Here's the leash. Where's the dog? Oh, behind me."

Ever vigilant Daisy atop the sandbags, watching for any great whites or Al Queda coming ashore.

The twelve-hour visit with friends wrapped up around the fire pit with more wine and conversation. Daisy has collapsed on Paul's lap. She's ready to go home.

This is home. Our little walk-in closet and Daisy taking over the bed. She is sacked.

Today we're going back to Brian and Denise's for a barbeque. Paul will buy salmon, fish and one steak. That's just for Daisy. Tomorrow, it's on up the coast to an RV park in the mountains above Santa Barbara near Neverland Ranch. Does anyone know where Michael Jackson's body is?

HELL ON WHEELS

Only hell is hotter. Wait a minute....this is Yuma. This is hell.

In Malibu

Hot dog

Well, here we go again down the road with our walk-in closet in tow. Our goal this time: all the way up the west coast to the San Juan Islands in Washington state, east to Spokane then drop back down through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah before getting back to Sedona in late September.

Thanks for being a part of Trailerblazing, part two. Tonight, one week into the trip, we are down and locked in a quite impressive RV park in the coastal town of Malibu on a hillside overlooking the Pacific.

One week without a blog or Daisy stories because until now we've had no TV, no internet and only spotty cell phone service. This park at $80 a night to park a damn 17-foot trailer has everything. Well, it damn well should. We'll be here three days and nights visiting our friends Brian and Denise who are summering here on the beach at Malibu. More about that later.

Our adventure began a week ago Sunday. We set out from our place south of Tucson. First night's destination: Yuma, Arizona. We had in mind to get up and get going by 6AM to try and beat the heat but one thing led to another and we left home at 10 and arrived at the RV park in Yuma at about 3.

Our first impression was, "Where the hell is everybody? Has there been a nuclear attack that we're unaware of?"

No RVs anywhere.

No one on the golf course.

No one in the pool.


No one nowhere at the Cocopah RV and Golf Resort.


But you didn't have to look far to understand why the "ghost town". The temperature gauge in the truck read 121 degrees. My God, it was hot. We thought the tires would melt and shred, a real danger in this heat especially for big rigs. But the good news is that we went out to dinner just as a cold snap set in. The temperature dropped to 110. But further good news: we heard that in nearby Death Valley the mercury approached and probably hit more than 130, a near-record high. We know where we're going next summer.


Next day we rolled into the Thousand Trails Pio Pico Park 25 miles southeast of San Diego and right on the border with Mexico. This is where the Border Patrol agent was shot and killed one week ago. These brave men and women have their hands full trying to stop non-violent illegal crossers and now they are faced with violent and armed drug runners. Geez, what a situation.


But enough about that. Now for a Daisy story. At the RV park Daisy had her first encounter with a tarantula. It was brief but somehow Daisy's instincts told her to stay away so the tarantula just ambled off into the grass.


Pio Pico's a nice park and an easy 40-minute drive into San Diego to my mom's place where my sister and brother-in-law were visiting from the northwest. But enough about them. Now for another Daisy story. My mom has a large, fully fenced in backyard where Daisy loves to chase a ball. Only now instead of running, one foot in front of the other like a normal dog, she leaps and springs all feet in the air at once like a deer bounding through the woods.



While it was great to see my family, three days driving through heavy San Diego traffic made us ready for something a bit more serene. So off we go to the next Thousand Trails where we have a free membership and where parking costs us nothing. This park, called Soledad Canyon, is in far northeastern LA county. Only thing is that to get here we had to drive through Riverside and San Bernardino through traffic and smog that was unbelievable.


But once here, the Thousand Trails was a good stopover. We had a great RV spot overlooking the San Gabriel mountains and wildlife refuge. Some of that wildlife makes its way into the park every night. Coyotes are a constant and sometimes deadly threat to pets. The guy parked next to us said that last week, ten spaces down, coyotes snatched a small dog and the only thing found the next day were tufts of white hair. I kept Daisy on a short leash on her nightly rounds but we still had a close encounter with a coyote that passed perhaps twenty feet in front of us. In a flash I picked her up and we hightailed it back to the safety of the 17-footer. There I discovered another threat from my traveling companion.


I have been ragging on Paul about chowing down on too many road snacks, Cheetos, Fritos and pork rinds and the newest healthy entree, Costco bins of "pub mix". I said, "your gut's getting too big" and at that point he threw it right at me saying that I look like I've put on ten-to-fifteen pounds myself and that did it. If we'd had knives and guns this Puerto Rican and that Irishman would have it out for good. As it was, we argued a bit, went to bed, got up, and had more Cheetos, Fritos, pork rinds, pub mix. Damn, that makes a good breakfast. Oh, we had a cup of coffee, too, and down the road we went as if nothing had happened.

Made our way through LA traffic and here we sit tonight in Malibu. Went to the supermarket. Bought fresh Dover sole. Had a tomato salad, steamed asparagus. A wonderful dinner. Tomorrow is another day.

We'd like to say it's all about the dog but she's sound asleep.

Back to Blogging, sort of

A heads-up, trailerblazing fans. We left Green Valley a couple of days ago for our next round of trailerblazing but have had no internet service in the wilds of far western Arizona and rural San Diego County. I'm on a borrowed computer writing this and am going to be kicked off soon.

Will resume the blog with all guns-a-blazing this weekend.

SHE'S BACK!

Daisy's new life jacket. Don't know why she needs one since there's no water in Arizona.

Paul has Daisy in a head-lock so she can't go for his throat.

Our joyful reunion. Joyful for me anyway.

Working out on the treadmill. I suppose now we'll have to buy her one.

Paul, Daisy's personal trainer, joins her on the treadmill.

Daisy's been sprung from the slammer, freed from pooch prison. Her intensive dog training classes have made her a mellower mutt and while we were told she had a few unsettling days in the beginning--missing us, we hope--she had a pretty good stay after that. We endured four long, torturous weeks without her but we're not so sure she really wanted to come home.

The training/boarding facility (Central Pet in Amado, AZ) has plenty of what we don't have: a lush green lawn, a large water fountain, a floor you can pee on without getting yelled at, a treadmill and plenty of snacks.

Regardless of how she feels, it's good to have her back. We're happy and right now, it's all about us for a change. Not about the dog.