John had left yesterday open, since we had only about forty miles to cover between Grants Pass and Ashland and no commitments in Ashland until 8:30 in the evening. He looked through the dog book, and noticed that there was a rafting company nearby which took dogs on its tours down the Rogue River. It seemed like a fun thing to do, so in the morning we gave them a call.
They did indeed still have space on that day's excursion, and they gave us directions to finding the landing. They wanted payment by cash or check, so I went to Bank of America while John packed up the room. We did have a little difficulty getting on the 5 freeway and finding the place to meet out guides, but we were only a few minutes late.
Our guide was a tall young man named Wade who was accompanied by a Labrador Retriever named Junior. Our other passengers were a family from Simi Valley with two pleasant teenage daughters. As is typical, we exchanged lots of useless personal information. Our guide was an aspiring theater teacher who had gone to school in Eugene where he had studied linguistics. The two girls went to an all-girls Catholic high school in Simi. Despite the hat, dad did not go to USC. And so forth....
Edie tried playing with Junior, but he seemed a bit older and though friendly was not really playful. She did get in the boat without too much fuss, and when we pushed off she seemed calm and quite happy with all the attention she was getting. She did get a little nervous when we hit our first whitewater, but she seemed fine. After about an hour of drifting down the river we got off to explore a bit and well, relieve ourselves. This was when we had our only real problem with her. She got off the boat and ran around, but she did not want to get back on the boat. In fact, when we pushed off, she jumped out and ran back on shore!
After about three hours or so, we pulled in again and here the Simi Valley family left us. They had only signed up for the half day adventure. We thought about this, but it seemed kind of dumb since the full day was only twenty dollars more. We were joined here by another dog, Popeye, a big yellow dog who seemed to be some kind of wolfhound and shepherd mix. Edie was intimidated by him, as she often is by larger dogs, but there were no problems. So three people and three dogs continued on the down the river.
We stopped again about ten minutes later at a particularly picturesque bend in the river to have lunch. Here Edie and Popeye made friends quickly, and they chased each other around the lawn having the best time. Poor Junior looked a little jealous as if remembering his own youth. At one point while John was lying down on the grass the two dogs jumped over him while chasing each other! Ah the moments when the camera was somewhere else.
We continued on down the river. We had a small kayak attached to our float, and John decided to take some of the rapids by himself. He did pretty well for the most part, but landed in the water in the end. I had a good time with the camera, but decided not to save the least flattering pictures. The weather was strange. At times it was quite hot, and then for a while it was raining. John pulled a trash bag over him, and he sort of looked like a cross between Darth Vader and a nun.
We met the owners of the operation on our ride back. Ferron was an old hippy still wearing tie-died tee shirts and driving a VW van. His wife was a genial woman from Marblehead who had not lost one bit of her "no-ath show-uh" accent. We paid our bill and headed on into Ashland. Edie fell asleep right away.
We found our bed and breakfast without much problem. It's not far from the dog park -- a definite plus, and it's a pretty spacious little cottage with a full kitchen attached to the rest of the house. It's been put together cheaply but with some sense of style: maybe we can call it "Homo Depot." We rested and cleaned up, and partially unpacked our stuff. John took a short nap. I discovered the fastest Internet connection of our trip so far.
We went to the local coop market and found stuff for dinner. The first time I went to this place it was still quite funky and had better politics than produce; now it seemed more like Whole Foods or another high-end organic market. We sat outside the theater to watch the free show on the green. It was the usual sort of thing: people singing madrigals while a small group of dancers incongruously pranced around in a sort of amateur homage to Martha Graham. I did not pay much attention to it.
The main offering of the night was On the Razzle, an adaptation by Tom Stoppard of some nineteenth century Austrian farce which was the inspiration for The Matchmaker and Hello, Dolly. Theater critics were pretty dismissive when it was first produced twenty-five odd years ago, and it is hardly Stoppard's best work. I found myself drifting in and out during the first act. There's some clever writing here, but it's not quite as clever as it thinks itself to be. A really smart elementary school kid would love it.
Miss Edie was happy to see us when we came home, and I was asleep in no time, and according to the complaints received, evidently snoring quite loudly.
