Here’s a little peek at our Thanksgiving trip to Los Angeles last week. We all (hubby, daughter, dog, me) drove down to Studio City from San Francisco (about 6.5 hours), stopping only once on the way there and once on the way back. Jake slept in the back seat with his head on my daughter’s lap, and probably wouldn’t have stirred the whole time except that the humans needed a pit stop. He is a great traveler.

We stayed at a really dog-friendly and very beautiful vacation rental in Studio City. It was just a little more expensive than the Best Western where we were going to stay, but we cooked almost all our meals there, so we ended up spending far less than we would have if we’d stayed at the Best Western and eaten most of our meals in restaurants. If you’re traveling in the Los Angeles area with a good dog, I’d highly recommend this place. Check it out on VRBO. The owners, Lloyd and Joanne, are super nice, and made all of us feel very welcome. If you stay there, tell ’em Jake from San Francisco sent you.

Jake is not a star-struck kind of guy, which is convenient, since we saw no celebs when we were visiting. He was equally ho-hum about the footprints at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt, and the stars in the sidewalks of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But he did go pretty ga-ga for a little dog at the fabulous Laurel Canyon Park. And then a giant dog went ga-ga over him. You can see their pics in the slide show above.

Sorry the slide show’s captions are so small. (You can click to make the slide show full screen, but it gets kind of blurry.) It was my first stab at playing with Adobe Lightroom 3, where it looks great. But transferring it to YouTube made it shrink dramatically in size and quality. It’s great software, very intuitive, and has jillions of uses. I hope to bring you some more of its tricks in the future.

Meanwhile, Hooray for Hollywoof!