Carmel-by-the-Sea, With a Dog

Carmel is the trip I recommend to anyone who's nervous about traveling with a dog for the first time. Carmel Beach is off-leash and legal, half the restaurants have patios that welcome dogs by policy rather than by exception, and shopkeepers keep biscuits behind the counter.

We stay at the pet-friendly boutique hotels off Ocean Avenue — the fee is usually fifty to seventy-five dollars per stay, not per night, and most include a bed and bowls in the room. Ask for a ground-floor room near an exit; a 6am bathroom trip through a lobby is nobody's idea of a vacation.

The drive down is two and a half hours from San Francisco. I stop at the Gilroy rest area to let him stretch, keep the crate strapped in the back, and freeze a water bottle so there's cold water at hour two. He sleeps the whole way now, which was absolutely not true the first three times.