Trip to Oregon

My wife and I have been on vacation since the sixth and got back home yesterday. We went north to Oregon to try to avoid some of the San Joaquin Valley heat for ten days. We did run into some temperatures over ninety in Ashland but most of the trip was pretty comfortable.

We started in Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We actually stayed in a very nice bed and breakfast in Medford called Under the Greenwood Tree, about ten miles up the road. The prices there are a lot lower than in Ashland itself. The first play we saw there was "The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare's intense study of revenge and intolerance. We next took in a production of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" that was very funny. Our final performance was a musical, "She Loves Me." This entertaining musical debuted on Broadway in 1963. It's based on the story "Parfumerie" from the 1930's by Miklas Laszlo that was remade into the 1940 Jimmy Stewart movie "Little Shop on the Corner" and more recently the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film "You've Got Mail."

As a postscript, if you ever go to Ashland you really must spend a little time in Lithia Park. It's right downtown next to the three Festival theaters and has wonderful trails that follow Ashland Creek through the woods. Between plays we kept cool by dangling our feet in the snow fed creek. Also nearby is historic Jacksonville. It's worth a visit for its pioneer buildings and annual musical Britt Festival. If you're interested in a gourmet dinner you might try the Jacksonville Inn. Very good!

We next visited some friends in Albany, just south of the state capital of Salem. While there we all went over to the coast to Newport to see the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which was surprisingly good. Particularly effective was a glass tube you can walk through to see the sharks swimming around you on all sides. Next day we took in the Oregon capitol building. You can see some pictures here. The "Golden Man" on top was so bright up close we could hardly look at it directly. They have a part time legislature that only meets every other year unless called into special session.

We spent the last three days in Oregon at a cabin at the Cedarwood Lodge on the McKenzie River, about 45 miles east of Eugene. This remote location was good for some peace and quiet in the beautiful forest. Mike, the proprietor, is a joy. The McKenzie is a great trout stream and nearby there are good hikes to waterfalls, a hot spring, a nice golf course and the road up to breathtaking views of the Cascades. It is remarkable how volcanic the Cascade Range is. Lava fields and volcanic cones are everywhere evident. At night, far from city lights, thousands of stars glistened like jewels spread across black satin. This was a great getaway.