I heard a voice that said, “Go West, Young Pup!”

Then I woke up from one of my wonderful naps, and mommy and daddy were talking about heading west to Washington state.  They’ve been talking about this for a while, but we just seemed to keep driving back and forth from Pennsylvania to Florida, so I never really knew if it was going to happen.

Then, one day, like magic, we were packing up the house on wheels and getting ready to go.  We went from Stephie and Eric’s house in Duncannon to Carlisle.

We were finally heading west!

We stopped in Carlisle to get the house on wheels washed.  All of the guys that were washing the house on wheels were waving and smiling at me, I made them so happy.  That’s what I do, I make people happy and smile.  Then after we got the house on wheels washed, we got onto Route 81 again, but we were going east!?  I started nudging daddy and said, ‘You made the wrong turn daddy!  We’re going east, not west!”

As it turned out, I was a little confused, we were still going to go west, just not yet.

First, we were going to Twin Groves Campground in Pine Grove to hang out with mommy and daddy’s friends, Mike and Brittany and their cousins.  It was a nice campground, me and mommy and daddy got some nice walks in and they got to spend time with their good friends.

After we left that campground, we met one of daddy’s old high school buddies, Darrin at Swatara State Park, which is just up the road from the campground that we were at.  I really like Swatara State Park.  Me and daddy and Lizze used to go up to Swatara State Park when daddy would take the house on wheels for test drives.  We hiked a lot of those trails last year before the house on wheels got moving for good.

This time, Darrin wanted to take us to a spot that we never hiked to before, but the house on wheels was going to be too big for the parking lot where the trailhead was.  So, Darrin picked me and mommy and daddy up where we parked the house on wheels and then we drove to this other trailhead.  So, I got a bonus ride that day!

We hiked up to a neat little cabin that was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  It was really cool.  We got back just in time.  As Darrin was dropping us off back at the house on wheels, it had just started to rain.

Once we got in the house on wheels, mommy and daddy showered because they were sweaty from our hike.  Then we stopped to do some laundry and went to Cabela’s for the night.

That whole week, we drove back and forth from Cabela’s to all kinds of places.  We saw a whole bunch of people that week.  We saw mom-mom and pop-pop and so many other people too!  That week was daddy’s birthday week, so daddy got to see a bunch of people that he loves on and around his birthday.  It was really fun.

Then on Saturday morning, we got moving again, but we were still going east!  We were going to see daddy’s friend, Billy Staples in the Bethlehem area.  We stayed in his driveway for a few days.  There were a bunch of old Major League baseball players that would come to Billy’s house because he was getting ready for a fundraiser for his BEST Scholars charity.  I like Billy, even though he has a cat, I still like him, he’s a neat guy and he loves to pet me.  We’ve been to Billy’s house twice now and then one time Billy came to visit us when we had the house on wheels at my daddy’s cousin, Carole’s house in Florida.  Daddy says that Billy didn’t go from Pennsylvania to Florida just to see me, but daddy is wrong about that.  I know that Billy loves me so much, that he made that drive just to see me again!  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

We left Billy’s house really early on Monday morning and had to drop stuff off for him at the golf course where the second part of his fundraiser was being held.

As we were leaving the golf course, I thought, “Here we go!  We’re finally heading west!”

But…we weren’t!  Now we were going south!  I was like, “I need to get daddy a compass!”  Were we going to Florida again?!”  It’s going to be way too hot in Florida!

Then daddy told me that we were going to Aberdeen, Maryland before we started to head west.

We were going to the Baseball for All Nationals at the Ripken Experience in Aberdeen.  It was a nice drive to Aberdeen; I have to admit that.  The roads had a lot of curves in them, but sometimes daddy will drive on those types of roads instead of highways because he says it’s prettier.  I can’t disagree with him on that.

The Baseball for All Nationals was a girl’s baseball tournament.  Daddy has always been a supporter of girl’s playing any sport that they want to.  He was doing a bunch of podcasts with people that he has been connected to over the years because of girl’s baseball.

We were staying at the Cracker Barrel parking lot all week and driving back and forth to the complex.  We stay in a lot of Cracker Barrel parking lots when we’re traveling in the house on wheels.  I still don’t know why when mommy and daddy come in from the Cracker Barrel, they don’t bring me anything.  I know that they ate some good food in there; I can smell the bacon and eggs on them, but they never bring anything back into the house on wheels for me, that’s so selfish of them.

On Wednesday, after we left the Cracker Barrel and went over to the complex, our one slide-out got stuck in between the in and out position.  The slide-outs are what make our house on wheels bigger when we’re parked.  Daddy spent all morning trying to get someone to come out to fix it for us, but no one could get there until Friday.  We were supposed to leave on Thursday, so we had to change our plans.

At this point, I didn’t know if we’d ever go west!

Honestly though, Wednesday turned out to be a pretty great day after all.  Even with the slide-out problem, one of mommy and daddy’s good friends, Cynthia Hobgood drove all the way up from Washington, DC just to visit with me!  Mommy and daddy think that Cynthia came up to visit with them, but I know better.  I first met Cynthia when she came up to meet with my daddy at the old sports complex that he used to run in Pennsylvania.  She always smells like her doggie, Duncan, but that’s ok.  Duncan is named after a basketball player and I’m named after a baseball player, so she is allowed to smell like Duncan.  We had a nice visit with Cynthia.  Daddy says that Cynthia is one of those “great humans” that God has allowed him to cross paths with.  I agree with daddy, Cynthia really is an awesome human.  So is Billy.  As a matter of fact, I’ve noticed that daddy has been pretty fortunate to surround himself with some pretty amazing humans.  That makes me happy for mommy and daddy.

We stayed in the parking lot of the Aberdeen Ironbirds Stadium on Wednesday and Thursday night.  Daddy knows the General Manager of the Ironbirds and he said it was ok.  Not sure what we would have done if daddy’s friend Jack wouldn’t have said it was ok, because we weren’t moving either way.

Finally on Friday afternoon, the repair guy showed up and got us temporarily fixed.  But, would you believe that we were going to have to go back to Pennsylvania again to get the slide fixed by our dealer for good!  I was like, “Here we go again!  Back in Pennsylvania?  I’m not getting any younger mommy and daddy!  I want to go explore the west!”

It really wasn’t all that bad though.  We got to stay with daddy’s old player, Kyle for a night.  That made mommy and daddy happy.  Mommy was really happy because she got to hold a baby girl.  Kyle and his wife Angie have all kinds of little kids running around.  Four total for now, they say that’s it, but I’m not sure if I believe them.  They seem to really like those kids and only one more will give them a basketball team and five more would give them a baseball team.

When we left Kyle’s house, we got to see Matthew.  Remember him?  He went to Knoebel’s with us, or us with him, depending on how you look at it.  Matthew is a dog person; he really loves me.  I can tell when people really love me just by the way that they pet me.  Matthew pets me like a dog person.  He’s a good petter.

After Matthew, we went to see daddy’s friend, Rachel Wertz.  She’s the grand-daughter of former MLB player, Vic Wertz, that’s kind of how daddy knows her.  But this time, this meeting really was just about me.  Rachel is also an artist and she’s going to illustrate the children’s book that I’m going to write.  We had to get together so that I could make sure that she passed the sniff test.

She did!  She’s really nice and she’s a very talented artist.  I know that she’s going to draw some really cool illustrations for me and my book.   Can’t wait.

So finally, after one more whole week, we really did start to head west!

The extra week was really good though.  We got see all of our family members one more time and even got to go to Alex’s 16th birthday party!

Our dealership, Tom Schaeffer’s got our slides all fixed up and of course all of their workers there just thought that I was the coolest dog that they ever met.  I couldn’t argue with them about that, because when someone is right, they’re right.

There we were, finally, on July 31st, we really did start to head west!  I was so excited.  We left at night after Alex’s birthday party and this time daddy’s compass was working right!  We were going west.

We drove about 2-1/2 hours and of course, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Chambersburg, PA to sleep for the night.

The next day, the real adventure started and I can’t wait to tell you all about all of the places that we’ve been to so far on our trek out west, but they will be in my next blog because this blog is getting really long and I’m hungry now and mommy is making something that smells good.  I have to go beg.

~to be continued.