Classic Car Merlin

Merlin appreciates a classy ride. Every May American Graffiti rolls into downtown San Rafael for the May Madness Classic Car Parade and Rockin' Street Dance. All afternoon muscle and pony cars line the main drag, spilling into side streets, all spit, polish, and shine. Mustang, Cougar, Barracuda, Road Runner, Charger, Challenger, GTX, GTO, Firebird, Thunderbolt, Thunderbird, Falcon, Skylark, Stingray, Triumph. Innovations in independence. The promise of power, in style. Open possibilities, cruising into the future with the radio bleating.

Key scenes of George Lucas’ 1973 American Graffiti movie were filmed here on 4th Street and Marin County is the home of Lucas, Skywalker Sound, and Industrial Light and Magic, minus the bits translocated to San Francisco's Presidio. Car movie stars park in front of the restored Art Deco Rafael Theater.

I tell Merlin when I was a pup, we changed our own oil and re-built engines after school. Everybody drove courteously and gas cost 25¢ a gallon. I learned to drive in our family Ford Galaxie 500. As teens, we cruised Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan's Highway One, V8s roaring, rattling the windows of Porsche and Lotus dealers who refused us a test drive no matter how much we dressed up and talked like we, or our parents, could afford a Porsche or Lotus. The Woodward Dream Cruise, held every August, is the world’s largest one day automotive event, although cars and cruising are an all summer sport. Woodward Ave’s northern terminus is Wide Track Drive in Pontiac, an important destination on Merlin’s 2007 California to Michigan Road Trip. In 1909, Woodward Avenue between Six Mile and Seven Mile Roads became the first mile of road in the world to be paved with concrete. People have been driving classic cars on it ever since.

Merlin looks dubious when I show him the flying car of the future past, a dazzling 1955 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. License to drive forever, the frontier of going. Merlin sniffs for the dog biscuit compartment, wondering how many we’d need for a trip to the moon.

My mom babysat a few times for John DeLorean, developer of the Pontiac GTO and Firebird, and famously, the DeLorean DMC-12 with it’s amazing gull-wing doors. Appropriately featured in the Back to the Future movies as the hero’s flying car time machine, Mr. DeLorean probably liked the idea of an engine powerful enough to run on anything, like banana peels. One time my mom asked him if his kids had their daily vitamin and Mr. DeLorean looked blank for a second then decisively handed each one four Flintstones Chewable Vitamins, one for that day plus three missed ones. More power!

Merlin eyes the rides for road trip-ability. He appreciates a spacious cargo hold and big windows. Perhaps a convertible. Merlin’s choice? Original Pony car, the Mustang, red with white leather seats- WOOF!

The weekend after May Madness was the Marin Sonoma Concours d’Elegance. Merlin discovered a vintage Rolls Royce. WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!

Spring Bath

In the grand tradition of medieval monarchs bathing once a year in spring to remove their winter layer of warm dirt, Merlin recently graciously agreed to his annual spring bath. Merlin likes water and will wade streams, splash puddles, and swim, as long as his paws touch bottom. Being an Australian Shepherd, he’d gleefully leap into a cattle trough somewhere in the Outback. At home between road trips, his backyard bathing tub gets filled with hose water and a squirt of lavender dog shampoo. After a good brushing and a Navy shower on any visible skin, Merlin gingerly steps into his wading pool, stoically enduring the hose shower and shampoo lather. He sits, briefly, as the sudsy water is worked into his waterproof fur.

Merlin usually prefers sunbathing, dreaming in ultraviolet, his black fur glistening with iridescent highlights. He would enjoy the warm, shallow Roman Baths in Bath in southwest England about 40 miles west by northwest of Stonehenge. An ancient spa town, Bath is the only place in Britain with natural hot springs, and probably the only place in Britain the Romans were remotely happy. Their temple town, Aquae Sulis, was dedicated to Celtic Sulis and Roman Minerva, goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools, memory, and getting into hot water. Hydrothermal springs still flow along Roman-built channels between mineral baths and healing pools in the rather unique Roman Baths Museum. Particularly agreeable to visit on a cold winter day, warm air wafts above the sacred spring, heating the entire complex. Visitors to the Grand Georgian Pump Room can sip the mineral rich water. An ultra chic Thermae Bath Spa recently opened, restoring 2,000 years of buoyant repose.

Merlin’s favorite part of his bath is the leap from the tub to race around the yard, shaking his wet cleanness over garden plants and sliding glass doors. He also enjoys toweling. Douglas Adams would approve, since a towel is the one essential item for every interstellar traveler, according to the omniscient Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Merlin carries around a special one on official Towel Day, May 25th, in honor of Adams and his fabulous intergalactic road trip tales. Merlin always travels with a handy stack of towels for wiping, sleeping, and piling. He recommends you always have one close at hand, or paw, in case you find yourself suddenly embarking on a road trip, or leaping out of a fresh spring bathtub.

The Last Daffodil Party

Each year Merlin eagerly looks forward to the annual early spring Daffodil Labyrinth Party in Mendocino. As a four month old puppy, the weekend was Merlin's first big overnight road trip. We packed his mobile dog house with familiar blankets, squeaky toys, water dishes, and puppy food for three days and headed north.

Puppies have tiny bladders. We stopped every half hour for a stretch, sniff, and drink. When I was a kid, our family spaniel only rode in the car on her way to the veterinarian, so the one time we tried to take her on vacation to a friend’s cabin up north she howled and puked all the way there. And back. Since here in California we drive everywhere, including to our walks, I knew any California canine companion would need to be road-ready and car friendly. We collected puppy Merlin from the Valley of the Moon when he was six weeks old and he’s been riding around joyfully ever since. Merlin adores his MerlinMobile and is happy to sit in it even when it’s parked in the driveway all day. One of his top favorite phrases is: In the car. Other favorites include What’s this?, Say please, and Oops! (especially when exclaimed from the kitchen). And of course, Road Trip! He rides about, senses thrust out the window, brain expanding and tracking. How astonishing to watch the earth shift and change around you with no knowledge of maps or countries. Merlin is like an early explorer, setting out for new worlds, guided by the sun and stars (and his chauffeur's GPS). He inspires me to discover new places, take the back roads, stop often for a stretch and a sniff.

The three hour drive threads through the ranch land north of San Francisco and west along US 128 through Boonville. Boutique vineyards are nudging out sheep ranches so we have to be sharp to spot spring lambs. Merlin’s got a thing for sheep. He’s not sure what it is, but he’s supposed to do something about them. We slow down so he can give them the Intense Herding Stare silently from the safety of his MerlinMobile. He also plays close attention to the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. He likes microbreweries. They serve french fries.

The annual daffodil party has been hosted since 1987 by Alex and Joan Champion on their property down a remote dirt road. The festive weekend gathering in early spring celebrates labyrinth walking, feasting, art, music, and travelers’ tales from the road trip of life. It’s our family reunion. One year there was a total lunar eclipse.

Alex is a labyrinth builder. He creates outdoor earthworks by digging and mounding dirt, engineering for drainage, wildflowers and beauty. His installations include public parks, private homes, schools, and conferences from hillside rock gardens to painted playgrounds in Chinatown. Merlin has helped with several, including the 80 foot installation at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. There are five earthworks on his property in Mendocino and in early spring a verdant carpet of native grasses flows around river stones and quartz rocks anchoring the pathways. Dozens of daffodils pop from the premier seven circuit Cretan Classical labyrinth.

This was Merlin’s first labyrinth. As a puppy, he could barely see over the foot high mounds from the path. He followed us boldly, at our heels, right where he wanted us. Round and round we trotted, following the path and other walkers right and left, to arrive in the center. Merlin immediately claimed the grassy knoll center as the best place from which to herd the entire troupe of walkers. He tracked everyone but when I ran along the outermost ring he shot towards me, hopping straight across the labyrinth, leaping from bank to bank. He bounded the mounds, tagged me with his nose, and bounded back to the center. Everyone cheered and a new game was born. Merlin spent much of the next two days running around the pathways and leaping from mound to mound. Thus his first and lasting love of labyrinths.

Last year’s Daffodil Party was cancelled because Joan Champion had just passed away. She had battled, and beat, cancer for a year but the treatments wore her down and she transitioned into pure spirit on the weekend of the annual daffodil party she loved so much. This year we gather again at her home in Mendocino to celebrate her life, and each other’s precious company. One last daffodil party.

Of all the labyrinths Merlin has visited from Grace Cathedral to Detroit, the Champions’ meadow earthwork daffodil labyrinth is his favorite. Come walk with Merlin!

Superbeach Sunday

While most people celebrate Superbowl Sunday by gathering in front of a large screen TV to cheer their teams, half time, and million dollar commercials, like Apple’s Macintosh Computer’s 1984, Merlin looks forward to wide empty roads to interesting places like Point Reyes National Seashore.

Just north of San Francisco in Marin County is a world of redwoods, rolling ranch land, and Pacific Ocean beaches. So with hot coffee in travel mugs and fresh pastries from the Marin Farmers Market, we set off for a day outing, a road trip mini.

It’s a winding road to the coast, and the Merlin Mobile rear seat windows go all the way down to avoid chin bumping. Merlin has developed a special stabilizing tripod sit. He can lean into curves while keeping his chin to the rim. His nose telescopes out the window in focused drive-by sniffing, sifting roadside rodents from pastureland cattle and deer. Even I can smell skunks and horse stables. Cows are his favorite. His herder brain sparks, his ears enlarge, his nose extends, and his head stretches out the window, pinpointing the herd. He knows he’s supposed to do something about cows and looks smug to be herding them from his car. Drive-by herding. Got them right where he wants them.

Highway 1 doglegs through Point Reyes Station, passing master black and white landscape photographer Marty Knapp in his gallery, our favorite west Marin artist. Continuing west towards Inverness, we skirt Tomales Bay, cross the San Andreas Fault, and drive uninterrupted onto another continent. The land feels wild and ancient, shifting into undulating hills and historic dairy farms, still inhabited, to Merlin’s delight. Ranch parcels have alphabetical letter names, as if settlers were so exhausted by the time they reached this far west, they just sat down and declared, “M”.


Radio antennas shimmer into focus. We drive through the magnificent Monterey cypress tree tunnel to the 1929 “G” Ranch RCA / Marconi Wireless Station, the most successful and powerful ship to shore station on the Pacific Rim. Merlin prances through the dappled light, enjoying the grand trees, sniffing for deer and watching for squirrels. Low winter rim light ignites the southwestern edge of the ancient, wind twisted cypress. We have stepped into another land, another time. We dance in the empty road.

Cattle give way to oysters at Drake’s Beach Visitor Center. We hop out to see if winter low tides have revealed Sir Francis Drake’s plaque proclaiming this land for England. While circumnavigating the globe raiding Spanish galleons, Drake camped here in the summer of 1579 to careen the Golden Hinde to repair her hull. A notorious Sea Dog, polite speak for authorized Elizabethan pirate, Admiral Drake traded with the local Miwok Indians, and claimed all the land east for Queen Elizabeth. He named it Nova Albion, Portus Novae Albionis, the Port of New England. If anyone had returned to defend his claim, we could all be speaking British, instead of English. Meanwhile, the Spanish crept north from Mexico, naming Drake's Beach la Punta de los Reyes, the Point of the Kings, in honor of their shipwreck date, the feast day of the three wise men, January 6, 1603. Merlin’s not a digger so no plaque discovery today.

There are several dozen cars in the visitors parking lot and a few people waiting for the shuttle bus to take them to the lighthouse for whale watching. The ranger mentions that Sundays are usually overflowing with hundreds of cars and we smile in our Superbowl strategy cleverness. With a NPS map of dog friendly beaches we drive on. Passing a herd of Tule Elk posing by an elk crossing sign, we head west for South Beach.

Merlin romps joyfully along the tideline, dabbling his paws in the darting waves. The steep beach makes for dramatic crashing surf, and dangerous undertows. We know better than to swim in the Northern California Pacific where even surfers wear wetsuits. We also know to never turn our back on the ocean but in a moment of unguardedness a sneaker wave suddenly surrounds us, dousing me to the knees and immersing Merlin. Time to retreat up the beach. There’s a considerate shower and foot wash in the parking lot. Merlin tries the paw wash but prefers to dry off in the back seat towel pile to emerge white pawed and sand free.

Buoyed by a car picnic, we drive east to North Beach and settle onto a sensible dune well away from sneaky waves. At the edge of a continent, we look west off the edge of the world. Merlin whale watches. There she blows! The unmistakable water spout of a surface gliding whale sprays into the sky. Our perch affords a fantastic view of the surf as water reaches towards sky and beach to tumble, churn, and roil. Waves rise dark blue then, shot through with sunlight, roll over themselves as they break light green. Bubbling with white frosting they dissolve into white splashes and glide up the beach to kiss the toes of squealing toddlers. After 200 photos (gotta love digital) I clean the sea spray from my lens and herd everyone back to the car.

Refreshed, restored, revived, we greet the evening star Venus in the darkening sky as we approach the near empty freeway, flowing home from our Superbeach Sunday.


Point Reyes National Seashore loop: 100 miles.

Winter Solstice Stirring

The winter sun weakens. We slow, snuggle, and loll in dreams. Life retreats, hibernates, gathers itself into a still core. Days are short and feeble, nights long and cold. The sun slows to a stop. We turn inward to draw from the deep, dark well of winter.

Here in Northern California, the summer dry season ends and it starts to rain. The hills sprout green. Merlin enjoys the rainy season. He frolics in the rain, splashes through the deepest puddles, races around the muddy fields, and rolls in the soggy fresh grass. At home, we towel off, light candles against the dark, and snuggle into a warm puppy pile under sleeping bags.

On winter solstice eve, we walk a candlelit labyrinth.
Over the next few days we watch the light, willing it to strengthen. By Christmas, we notice days are just a tad longer and brighter. Spring is a long quarter year away, but on the winter solstice, light returns to the world. Hope is renewed.

We celebrate the re-turn of the sun, imagining ancient sky watchers who set stones and timbers to mark the weakest extreme of the sun’s yearly journey. The Neolithic great chambered tomb of Newgrange in Ireland is aligned to winter solstice sunrise. A shaft of dawn light flowed into the passageway to illuminate triple spiral carvings in the heart of the tomb. You can watch it live via internet webcam. It was cloudy this year.

Winter solstice sunset was also a popular Neolithic holiday and Stonehenge hosts a spectacular light show. Aussie dog Merlin has yet to travel (physically) to Stonehenge, but I have visited a dozen times. A UNESCO World Heritage site in southern England, Stonehenge is a interminable magnet of mystery, controversy, speculation, and spectres. Winter solstice is my favorite time. No crowds, long strafing light, misty muted stones. The sun is a pale circle crawling along the southern sky towards the great gate of stones. At sunset it sinks between the trilithons and seems to pause. It hangs hitched to the henge, light pouring fourth along the winter solstice sunset/ summer solstice sunrise alignment with the outlying Heel Stone. Stonehenge has marked the sun’s journey for over 5,000 years. Now, you have to watch from the road through the fence to stand on the exact winter alignment. It’s worth it.

Jesse James Picnic

Ah, this is the life: wide open road, level horizon, stop whenever, sleep, drive again, just me and Merlin. Ah, endless road trip.

We cross the Missouri River into Iowa, and promptly stop at a shiny new Iowa Welcome Center. It’s like walking into the future- climate controlled glass, chrome, etched rock walls, original fine art, and motion detecting everything, including the chilled drinking fountains. Illuminated vending machines calmly hum. There’s wireless internet. A covered walkway leads to the information center where square birch islands of cheerful brochures pose beneath a parade of area maps. A perky historical society volunteer smiles and asks what she can help me find. I tell her about Merlin’s Road Trip and she thinks that sounds like a grand adventure. She hands me a map of antique shopping towns with a wink. I ask for a picnic stop recommendation. “Oh, there’s the Jesse James Historical Site.” Perfect.

An hour later we’re at the scene of the world’s first robbery of a moving train. Allegedly, the notorious James Gang had discovered the drama and ease of heisting trains. Choosing remote, unguarded locations to derail mobile cash seemed the ideal crime of the future, and a healthy alternative to getting shoot by bank guards in towns. In the summer of 1873 they learned about $75,000 in gold due to depart Cheyenne for Chicago on the new mainline Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. The outlaws fortified themselves with pies purchased from the section foreman’s wife, and camped in the hills near Adair waiting to topple the train. On July 21, 1873 with a track removed and the engine on its side, Jesse and Frank James convinced the guard to open the safe, but the gold shipment had been delayed. Enraged, they ransacked the passengers, collecting only $3,000. Telegraph alerts shot around the country. Armed posses chased the gang all the way to Missouri, where they disappeared... A bit of rail is all that remains of the Adair railroad line. And it is a lovely spot for a picnic.

Iowa is America’s middle, the land between two rivers, where I-80 runs almost straight east west, like an Indian road aligned to the Equinox, or the promise of a better future. All sorts of normal people are from here, like American Gothic painter Grant Wood and U.S.S. Starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk. The radio choices are talk, country, sports or Christ. Merlin settles in for a day of drive-by sniffing of cows as we listen to the next caller getting around to his point. Merlin settles in for a day of drive-by cows sniffing as we listen to the next caller getting around to his point.

Somewhere in the middle of the Tall Corn State, we pull into a welcome Iowa Interstate Safety Rest Area. Iowans never abbreviate. They have the time to say everything they mean to say, and they take the time to say everything they mean. In my initial exodus from Michigan to California, I stopped in a Poweshiek hardware store to get a rain tarp for my U-Haul trailer full of all my earthly possessions. I asked for a tarp. A chap in a red checkered shirt asked if I meant to request a tarpaulin that resisted wind shear and had been water proofed and was fitted with reinforced grommets and did I have a preference for dark midlands forest green or lapis lazuli blue. I stared back and tentatively said green, please. Perhaps it’s an indicator of a good life to have the time to never abbreviate. Perhaps its a side effect from watching corn grow.

Merlin and I play with the Interstate Safety Rest Area automatic drinking fountain detector while truckers surf the web. Merlin gets covered in ladybugs. For the next 50 miles, I shoo ladybugs out the windows, thinking of Jimmy Stewart’s Charles Lindbergh giving his insect hitchhiker an aw shucks last chance to escape before his Spirit of St. Louis left land for the icy Atlantic. In the movie version of Lindbergh's historic 1927 first solo non-stop transatlantic flight, an airline executive warns that the New York to Paris feat isn’t like dropping a mail bag in Keokuk, Iowa. Fifty years after Jesse James was robbing trains, Lindbergh flew airmail for the army and once hopped a night train after his plane went down in a Midwest blizzard. He said he believed in things he could touch: an instrument panel, a pressure gauge, a compass. I'd seen the Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It's smaller than our front seat. Merlin and I sip our canteens and check our gauges. As we’re calculating our next fuel stop, signs announce the World’s Largest Truck Stop. We have to stop. Dwarfed by several hundred semi-trucks, we fuel up. I decline the wi-fi service. Merlin declines the dog wash service.

The Mississippi River is calm here at Davenport as dusk lifts a near full moon over the eastern trees. We drive up the bluff and romp about on the lawn of the closed Welcome Center. A jay squawks and I wonder if it’s an east of the Mississippi or west of species. Indian mounds dot the Mississippi River bluffs. During a 1990’s pre-Merlin road trip, I explored Effigy Mounds National Monument after following the Wisconsin River west with Lewis and Clark. I stood in their footsteps 500 feet above the roaring confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers, now Wyalusing State Park, where they had first seen the Mississippi after hearing it for days. Their complete 1804-06 journals are now online in the Library of Congress American Memory Collections. The rivers meet at Prairie du Chien, French for Prairie of the Dog Merlin notes.

Some time later, find ourselves looking for lodging in Peru. We could have gone on to Ottawa or Marseilles, but our bums were sore from sitting. We check in to a sparse dog friendly motel and check out a huge corn field dog run out back under the stars. We’ll figure out where we really are in the morning. Ah, endless road trip.

Day Seven: Crossing the Mississippi to Peru.
Lincoln, Nebraska to Peru, Illinois. 545 miles.

Transcontinental Merlin

Breakfast is another fresh self-made waffle. We GOT to get one of these machines when we get home. Merlin was hoping for a triple King Kong burger but they weren’t open for breakfast. Feeling the miles ahead smirking at our languid progress, we zip onto the highway.

Traveling Interstate 80 one merges with the deep current of American driving freedom. Much of I-80 is the original Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across America. Planned in 1913 to link Times Square to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park, it traveled through 13 states, 10 of which Merlin and I will touch on our road trip. The highway onramp sports proud blue signs proclaiming the Eisenhower Interstate System. Young Eisenhower had driven the Lincoln Highway across America in 1919 with the U.S. Army’s first Transcontinental Motor Convoy. Crawling from Washington DC towards San Francisco, they fixed cracked bridges and pulled their trucks out of mud and sand for two months. Eisenhower titled the trip, Through Darkest America With Truck and Tank. He later discovered the German autobahn network and when he became President, launched the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, the largest American public works project. We thank Ike as we glide along the smooth ribbon of road, saluting his 5-Star signs as we pass.

Having driven arrow straight Roman Roads all over Europe, it’s hard to imagine America a hundred years ago with barely a dirt track through the wilderness between towns. Interstate transport was all trains. The American Automobile Association was founded in 1902 calling for a great system of public highways. People were skeptical, since few could afford to spend weeks riding around in expensive horseless carriages. Undaunted, the AAA began publishing road maps in 1905. We’re carrying a handy box of modern AAA maps and tour books for the navigator.

The first successful transcontinental automobile trip was in 1903 by two men and their dog, Bud. Riding on an bet sparked in their San Francisco men’s club, Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall Crocker drove east in a Winton touring car, dubbed Vermont. Sixty-three days and $8,000 later, including the Winton purchase, they reached New York. Bud made the cover of The Auto Era, wearing his dust encrusted goggles. Their road trip inspired America to get out and get going. In 1909, the first woman, Alice Huyler Ramsey, drove a Maxwell touring car from New York to San Francisco in 59 days. In 1916, suffragists Nell Richardson and Alice Burke, and their cat Saxon, drove across and around America for five months and 10,000 miles advocating voting rights for women. Their yellow Saxon auto, known as the Golden Flier, became a powerful symbol and mobile podium for women’s rights. In 1928, Boy Scouts placed thousands of markers along the route dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. In 1931, Amelia Earhart flew the Lincoln Highway for her Beech-Nut Transcontinental Autogiro Tour, taking 10 days from Newark, New Jersey to Oakland, California, and 16 days back to Newark.

The Lincoln Highway Association was formed in 1912 by automobile entrepreneur Carl Fisher. He rallied his industry friends to build a coast to coast rock highway to be completed in time for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Headquartered in Detroit, their Trail Blazer Tour set out in 1913 to scout the best route from New York City to San Francisco. Fueled by contributions from former President Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison, both friends of Henry Ford (who refused to support non-government funded road projects), President Woodrow Wilson joined the project. Wilson was the first U.S. President to make frequent use of an automobile and his $5 pledge earned him Lincoln Highway Certificate #1. All along the route, people began to wake up to the possibilities of automotive progress and pleaded to be included on the new highway route. After a month of mud, sand, floods, overheated radiators, and cracked axles, the Trail Blazer Tour’s 17 cars and two trucks paraded down San Francisco’s Market Street for applauding crowds. The Lincoln Highway Trail Blazers returned to Indianapolis by train.

The announced road included eastern Turnpikes, British military trails, ancient Indian footpaths, pioneer and stagecoach routes, and the Pony Express trail. We’re driving through history and back in time!

The 1916 Lincoln Highway Association Official Road Guide cheerfully described a transcontinental road trip as something of a sporting proposition. It optimistically allowed 30 days of daylight required driving, averaging 18 miles an hour for 6 hours per day. Estimated budget was $5 a day per person for food, gas, oil, and hotel meals. Car repairs were too unpredictable to be included. Motorists were urged to top off their gasoline tanks at every opportunity since gas stations were rare, wade ahead in water before risking the car, and carry a block and tackle, chains, shovel, axe, jacks, tire casings and inner tubes, and a pair of pennants. The guide advised against wearing new shoes. Firearms were probably not required, but full camping gear was west of Omaha. Sagebrush signal fires would alert nearby ranches to bring horses for a tow.

We were an hour west of Omaha and refreshed from camping in a dog friendly plushy motel. Fueled on waffles with our tanks topped off, we set out to look for pennants along the way.