Reunions in LA and Orange County

 Costa Mesa, CA

Francis buckled in for his adventure

Heading to Long Beach to See Friends

Today is set aside for catching up with friends. We grabbed our Sans Rival cake, a beer to share, and a few other things and hit the road.  Our first stop is in Long Beach.  We are having lunch with Leigh-Anne, Gina, and Echo the Italian Greyhound.  We arrived right on time and were invited in and given a tour of their lovely house.  It was built in 1925 and has a ton of style.  A lot of windows and great wood floors (no I am not trying to sell you a house).  After the tour we went out back and shared our Fremont Brew 5000 Barleywine while the dogs lounged in the sun and Leigh-Anne worked the grill.  

Francis enjoying the warm SoCal weather

This is Echo The Italian Greyhound.  She is difficult to
photograph because she is full of Zoooooooooms!

Echo was suspicious of Francis at first.   She hid behind Leigh-Anne and ducked out to bark at him.  Francis reacted the same way he reacts to most things, he looked into the sun and blinked.  The barks from Echo quickly went from, "Will you please leave my backyard?" to "Will you please play with me?"  Francis continued to ignore her as she tried her best to rile him up using cute barks and play bows.  It really reminded us of when we had Tom and Larry, our Italian Greyhounds, and how much fun they had playing with other Greyhounds.  

Soon lunch was ready and we made our way to their dining room where Francis continued to sit on his bed and Echo continued to do her best to get Francis' attention.  The BBQ Chicken (the sauce was a Texas BBQ recipe), Potato Salad (a family recipe), and Spinach Salad were great.  At some point Francis decided to team up with Echo to try to get chicken bites.  They stood side by side and gave us their best good dog beg.  It worked and soon they were eating bites of chicken next to each other.  

Echo doing her best to coax Francis down off
the couch to play with her favorite stuffed toy.
She was way too zooomy for my phone to capture but you get the idea

Soon it was time to try the cake we purchased the day before.  It was really great and you should go to My Mom's Bakeshop and buy one right now.

Yum yum!

After dessert we took Francis out back just incase he had to use the facilities.  Both he and Echo took their turn and then proceeded to chase each other!  Echo finally broke through Francis' barrier.  They zoomed around the backyard for about 10 minutes.  Francis isn't used to not being the fastest dog so this was new to him.  

Francis looks a bit stunned here but he is just tired

Echo almost all zoomed out

We said our goodbyes and started driving to our next meetup but when Donna typed in the instructions it turned out we had about a half an hour to spare.  That gives us half an hour to try to hit up the Tiki Bar that is in the area and was on my planning list.  Maybe there will be parking.

Tiki Time!

The Bamboo Club in Long Beach

Donna enjoying the garnish on her 3 Dots and a Dash

My Virgin Lava Flow and Donna's 3 Dots and a Dash

This is Francis' 2nd Tiki Bar

Their dog friendly outdoor patio

Tiki Murals

My Tiki Mug

The Bar

They have their own rug!

There is an arm holding the light!

On to Orange County

Our next reunion was taking place in Costa Mesa at Green Cheek Brewing. Green Cheek is a large space that allows dogs so it is the perfect place to meet a group of people.  We arrived on time and a car was just pulling out of the parking lot so we filled the space.  This, apparently, was very lucky.  Everyone else we were meeting had trouble finding parking.  I grabbed us 2 beers while Donna grabbed a table and set Francis' bed up.  

Their mascot is a parrot and it is very cute

The bar

My FINDING THE THIRD ROOM Hazy IPA

We ordered a snack too

Their mascot on a glass I would have bought
if we weren't living out of a van

Cute art

More Art

A cactus that needs less attention than most cacti

A really crappy blurry photo of our group.  When I got home
I started researching new phones with better cameras

It was a great evening of catching up.  This is the core group of people that got me through my days working at Disneyland.  There were many others but this is the group I had Surf Trips with, went snowboarding with, went rock climbing with, and went to Vegas with. They are all the type of friend you could go 20 years without seeing or talking to and then get together and 5 minutes in, it's like you were together all along.  It's a great group of people and we were so happy they all took time out of their busy schedules to meet us in Costa Mesa.

On the way out I bought 2 cans of their Barleywine.  We are looking forward to trying them on one of our up and coming rest days.  The drive home wasn't too bad and we ended up going straight to bed because we were almost as tired as Francis.

Here is one more gif of Echo playing with a fuzzy lure. 
I need a new camera with a better phone.

Check out what we did yesterday here.