Road Trip Stays Loving

How do your friends best spread messages of love?

“Love is shown more in deeds than in words.” (St. Ignatius)

Ruth and I look forward to renewing three close friendships in California at least once a year as part of our cross country road trip regimen in the United States. In doing so we typically cover most of the state’s Pacific coast region along the State Highway 101 corridor with several  preplanned stopovers along the way. To clarify further, our itineraries run south to north beginning with a three day stay with our old, Florida neighborhood friends, Tommy and Jenny, in the hills of Thousand Oaks. We’re always treated like royalty by them in their spacious house and enjoy elaborate homemade meals along with their total respect for our need for privacy each day. They also share with us their dog pet dog “Archie”, who roams around the living room and outdoor patio to play with us throughout the day.  Moving north several hundred miles up the coast to the busy Pacific Heights region of downtown San Francisco, we next enjoy leisurely  visits with our urban sophisticate buddy, Dan, who likes to inform us about interesting articles concerning current issues of the day. Dan also offers his services as a tour guide around his community as we accompany him along the city streets each visit to window shop for a couple of hours. 

Moving on to the more “laidback”atmosphere of the Santa Cruz vicinity, seventy five miles southwest of San Francisco, our interests in music, travel, spirituality and sports bring us together annually with a longtime companion couple, Bobbi and John each year. Over the years, this popular tourist region has become increasingly more difficult to visit with heavily congested highways, exorbitant lodging  prices, and difficult mountainous  

terrain to cross. But Bobbi makes it very easy for us to settle down quietly for a few days there by offering us free stay in her guest bungalow in the back of her primary residence. While the house location and structural features are nothing special, there’s a magical landscaping/artistic touch she’s created there which provides a genuine atmosphere of inner peace/loving care whenever we choose  to stay there. Meanwhile, John her friend lives conveniently in his townhouse a mile way from Bobbi with other common interests in mind. On a given day, he might thus share with us interesting facts about his extensive record collection in the rock n’ roll era, review road conditions along our intended roadtrip route or offer us his couch to watch popular professional teams – Giants, A’s, Sharks, and Warriors on his big screen television .   

So I’m making a reasonable prediction then that such mutual affection existing with our highly regarded friends in California will inspire us to slow down some from “bopping” around the country so much in the future. Instead we’ll likely focus on much longer stays in both of these familiar coastal vicinities. Thus it seems appropriate to end here by recognizing some tokens of loving care received by our California friends in the following photo set, courtesy of Bobbi’s homemade artistic talents.