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March 17, 2006
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
While we were in town last weekend, it started to snow. Not a lot mind you, just enough to give concerns for adults and the delight to children. When we arrived at my daughter's place in West Linn there was this lump in the yard - a sign that a snowman had been made by our almost 3-year old granddaughter, Jadyn. She was so proud of her accomplishment. She and her father had been out frolicking in the snow and she had come in the house where she had asked her mother, "I need a smile". The smile was of course for the snowman and so some rocks were quickly put in place for a smile. There were reports of more excitement from my other two granddaughters, Ashtin and Paige where they had snow at their house too. By Saturday morning, all the snow had disappeared. That's life in the Northwest, we get snow occasionally, but it usually doesn't last long.
Around noon on Saturday, after Dave got through hanging window shades for our daughter Lara, we headed to Seattle for the Northwest Steam Society's annual dinner meeting. We planned to spend the night in Seattle so we reserved a hotel close to where the dinner was going to be held. The dinner was great and I won the photo contest with the picture that we submitted of Dave leaning over the Captain Bell after our unfortunate trailer mishap last summer. The picture was worth a thousand words and I think everyone could relate to his anguish.
After dinner and socializing, we headed back to our hotel. Now let me explain that Dave is notorious for finding "cheap" hotels for us to stay, especially in Seattle. There was this one time we stayed in a place in Seattle that I think they rented out by the hour. The room next to us was rocking all night long and we didn't get any sleep! Well, the room Saturday night wasn't any better. We were both awake at midnight by the sounds of a wild party directly over our heads. The noise went on until 2:30 a.m., when someone finally knocked on their door and asked them to quiet down. They did and we managed to get a few more hours of sleep. We had to get up early the next morning and head back down to Portland as we had another Blazer game to engineer that evening.
We headed back to Wheeler after the game and finally got into bed around midnight. It was another short night, as I was up at 6:00 (too many things on my mind) and I went to my aerobics class. After washing a couple loads of clothes and getting caught up with our mail, we repacked our bags and headed out later that afternoon for Ashland and the Shakespeare Festival.
Ordinarily, Ashland is about a 5-hour drive to the opposite end of the state. Since we had extra time, Dave decided that we could add an hour and take the coast highway 101 as far as Florence and then cut inland to Eugene, spending the night in Cottage Grove at another hotel. This is usually a beautiful drive with a view of the ocean but it was dark and stormy and we couldn't see much. We always stop half way down in Cottage Grove on our way down to break up the trip so that we can arrive the next day in Ashland in time to catch the 1:30 play. The history behind this hotel in Cottage Grove is that some years back we stopped here and we found a little field mouse in our room. The manager was very embarrassed and after a failed attempt to corner the mouse, moved us to a nicer room. Ever since then, this has been a running joke with that manager and all we have to do is mention the word "mouse" as we check in and they always upgrade our room.
We finally arrived in Ashland around noon, checked into our hotel and grabbed a bite to eat before our first play. Ashland is nestled in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon. It is a small college town and is world famous for its theater and the Shakespeare plays, which go on from March through October. It started out as a Shakespeare theater 50 years ago, but has now expanded to 11 plays each season, about 4 of which are Shakespeare and the rest by other playwrights, many of them contemporary. There are so many different types of people who we see there, from students and tourists to the locals that make up the population. The locals are mostly hippy types, Birkenstocks, flannel shirts; you know the granola/vegetarian types who wander around town with big dogs on leashes. The rest of the locals come in from the hills and have long beards, old pickup trucks and big dogs with no leashes! The visitors run from the Mercedes and BMW set to just plain folks like us. The theater tickets are expensive, so most of the visitors have money. The rest (like us) have to save up for the trip! It is a wonderful mix and great for people watching! There is beautiful Lithia Park to stroll through during the summer, interesting shops with stuff you can't find anywhere else that you can browse in between shows. There are literally dozens of good restaurants and over the years we have found some great places to eat.
Going to Ashland has always been a special thing that Dave and I do and have always enjoyed our time there. Even though it's expensive, it's our one "vice" and we save up for it each year. We have been coming to the plays for the past 20 years and some of the plays have been good and some of the plays have been not so good. However, the plays that we saw this time were outstanding, "A Winters Tale", "The Importance of Being Earnest", "Diary of Anne Frank" and "Up". We will come back again this fall and see six more. Of course, there are our favorite shops that we visit and I always come home with things for the grandchildren.
After stopping off in Salem to see Leslie and Jason and our oldest granddaughters, Ashtin and Paige and have dinner with them, we came back to West Linn where we spent the night. Today, we will head home for one night and get repacked for our trip to Phoenix on Sunday.
