We Do Know the Way to San Jose---and Beyond and Dogs Rule the World

We drove to Carmel today to meet up with  my old high school friend, Vicki, who was visiting there from Santa Barbara with her husband and daughter.   We have recently reconnected through Facebook, and haven't seen each other in 45 years!

 It was a great trip, as was the journey there.   Drove towards San Jose, but took the scenic route near Santa Cruz.   We ate lunch in Capitola, at a Chinese restaurant called The Chit Chat."  I was the Chinese New Year, and the waittress greeted us with a nice Happy New Year, the Year of the Tiger.   The food was wonderful, the crab being really fresh, the soup and fried rice being excellent.   It kept our good moods up.

The road took us on this stretch of highway that never ceases to fascinate me.  It's near Santa Cruz, and is spooky and beautiful!    There are huge pine trees on either side of the highway, which is quite windy, and also quite winding.   The trees are so dense that this stretch of road is generally cloudy, dark and misty.   It is very interesting.   We passed the exit to Holy City, which has such meaning in Dan's life.   It was 24 years ago that Dan came to California, and found his brother Jim, who hadn't been heard from in 11 years.   His search began at Holy City, and ended up with a  reunion and reconnection with him.   As Jim just recently died of lung cancer about a month before we got here, this was a particularly poignant memory.

The next thing we passed were the artichoke fields of Castroville.  I love artichokes!   I eat as many as I can out here, since it's hard to get good ones in Michigan.  I was in artichoke heaven, and we did stop at a stand that had fresh ones by the dozens!   They also had fresh garlic since we were also near Gilroy!   We stocked up on both.

We then got into Carmel, and I found Vicki.   We still really hit it off, after all these years!   We had the same memories, which is always good, and have the same good chemistry we used to.   Our best memory is our obsession with the book, "Compulsion", which is all about a true murder that took place in the 20's.   The murderers were 2 wealthy boys named Leopold and Loeb who decided to murder a random person just to see if they could.   They chose a young teenager named Bobby Franks.   The book is about the murder, as well as their trial and their lawyer, who was Clarence Darrow.  The trial was very famous because of Darrow, but also because it was the first time the "McNaughton" law was used, which is the insanity plea.
Vicki and I both loved this book for several reasons---we love crime novels, true and fictional, and also, we both had family connections to the place of the murder.   It took place in Hyde Park in Chicago--Vicki's father was friends with the victim, may have even been his tennis partner the day he was killed.   My father grew up in Hyde Park also, and both our families knew their families.   We were so obsessed with this that we took a field trip down to Hyde Park from our northern suburb, to find all the places talked about in the book!   neither of us ever forgot this.
It was great to reconnect.

The other fun thing is Carmel.   It loves dogs!  We brought Gus with us, who was welcomed into the B & B Vicki was staying in, which is owned by Doris Day.   We took Gus to dinner with us, as Vicki and her family had their dog too.   Dogs are everywhere!    It was very cool.

Got home quite late, but it was a great day.