Dog day Saturday

Finally, Saturday arrived! It was a good week but felt awfully long. We awoke to sunshine again but temps in the low 50s. Stacey and Brynna both took Heidi for walks and then I took her for a run by the beach. They do not allow dogs on the beach here at all so we ran on a bike trail just across the street from the beach. We noticed quite a few more walkers, bikers and runners than we saw a couple of days ago so we were not alone in enjoying some morning exercise.

After a nice breakfast and everyone getting ready we researched if there might be a beach somewhere close that we could take Heidi to. We found there were not any! We did find that there was a dog park within 15 miles or so. We decided Heidi has been doing really well on the trip and we wanted to see how she might do at the park so we drove out there. There were only about four dogs there when we arrived so we felt pretty comfortable letting her off. When we did she took off like a shot and started playing with the other dogs but within a minute she came back to check on us. There were a couple of dogs that were together and one had a frisbee that it was very possesive of and it growled agressively at Heidi but she did really well and pretty much ran away and back to us.

She did really well and found a yellow lab about the same age as her retrieving tennis balls and decided that was a fun game. Not sure the yellow lab liked the competition but the owner would throw the ball and both dogs would go to retrieve but Heidi got there first most times. She would then grab the ball and bring it right back to the owner.

Another nice thing was she seemed to be as interested in the people as much or more than the dogs this time which is a first. We tried calling her a few times and most of the times we were able to get her to come to us.  Overall we were really happy with her performance and she had a great time burning off some energy.

On our way back we decided to stop so Stacey could check out a store she likes - Coldwater Creek. Not sure if it was the store prices or our kids behavior but I had to take a call and she was out within a couple of minutes. I checked out a couple of restaurant reviews and found a BBQ place that sounded good. I don't think Stacey was in the mood for cooking so we decided to check it out.

Turns out it was not the best place. Reviews can be a little misleading. It was OK but definitely not as good as the price should have made it. After lunch we dropped Heidi off at the trailer and headed to the nearby beach. The kids played in the sand as Stacey and I enjoyed the sunshine.

We returned to the trailer and spent a little time planning out the rough route for the next few months of our trip. It may change but we think we will loop through Texas in February and then head northeast to hit Washington DC around April and then start the zig zag route back west. We will see how close we come to that scenario!