Creamy!

It was clear but cold when we woke up. The thermometer read 45; for those of us from Southern California, that’s January! But it made little difference as we were not planning to hit the beach right away. No, as intrepid tourists how could we resist Tripadvisor’s number 1 attraction in the area, the Tillamook Cheese factory!

The Tillamook Creamery – its official name – is pretty cheesy (sorry, I couldn’t resist that). You look down on two rooms. In one, the milk is heated until the curds (solids) and whey (liquid) are separated. Artificial color is added to the curds, and  they pressed and heated until even more water comes out. Finally, the machines extrude 40 pounds blocks of yellow milk solids. A conveyor belt sends these blocks to another room where another group of workers seal them in plastic bags. The lighting was not great, and somehow the camera made the cheese look even more unnatural than it already was!

At this point, the cheese is sent over to a warehouse for aging. Generally the longer a cheese is aged, the better its flavor. But it is expensive to simply stockpile cheese under climate-controlled conditions, so after about 60 days most of the cheese is sent off to market.

The real attraction, the reason there are so many RV’s in that parking lot, is the cheese bar when you can get free samples of the different Tillamook products. They are arranged in order of aging. The first bowl has cheese curds, the slimy little pieces of unaged cheddar. Prior to this I had only had cheese curds on poutine, but they were no better separated from soggy French fries and pork gravy.

The tasting room led into the shop where all the flavors of Tillamook cheese are on sale. We bought a chunk of the three year cheddar which is really quite good. I cannot be quite so effusive about the 60 day cheddar. There is also a large ice cream stand where the different flavors of Tillamook ice cream can be sampled. John and I shared the five flavors for five dollars bowl. I liked Mudslide the best.

One the way back from the Tillamook Creamery we found the Tillamook Crematory. I am sure that my vegan friends would probably not see this as merely a difference of a few letters, but as emblematic of the evil of dairy consumption. John just figured that if he had been typing our morning destination into the GPS he might have ended up here instead.

We spend the afternoon doing the Three Capes Drive. We did much of this a few years ago on our first trip to Oregon with Edie. She showed no particular signs of remembering any of it, but as I have often noted dogs seem to have little appreciation for scenery. Here we are at the Cape Mears Lighthouse.

I have to admit that while I would certainly not be in favor of taking down any of these lighthouses, I do not quite understand the attraction they have for some people. There are folks who travel up and down the entire length of the continent visiting different lighthouses with the enthusiasm that birders have for sighting different species. To me, when you have seen one Fresnel lens you have seen all of them.

Not far from this was the Candelabra Tree. This was good, but I pondered how much more fun it could be if it had the full “Trees of Mystery" treatment.

We found an isolated beach not that far away, and Edie and Eli frolicked. Edie seemed intent on posing for photographs. Eli, of course, was obsessed with his ball.

We continued on to Pacific City. It is interesting how all of these towns on the Oregon Coast seem to attract a different group of tourists and each seems to have an appropriately different personality. You can drive your truck on the beach in Pacific City, and it’s not surprising that a brewpub dominates the town like the cathedral does in Durham. Just the signs “Burgers, Burritos, and Beer” tell you all you need to know about Pacific City.

There are sand dunes nearby when you can ride ATVs. One section of it, however, that thankfully set aside as a county park and wildlife area. A creek flowed into the ocean here, and the shallow water and vast expanse of sand were perfect for retrieving tennis balls.

It was late by the time we returned to Netarts. We had planned a longer evening stroll like we had had the night before, but it was very windy and quite cold. So we drove a couple miles to Oceanside and strolled there for a bit.

Despite what felt like arctic conditions to us, the sunset was lovely.

On the way back, we stopped where the boys had build their volcano the night before to see their efforts today. It was even bigger and better! I would definitely give them first prize in the Science Fair.

Coasting

We packed this morning. Ellen and I took the dogs for one last walk. Since Rafiki will be moving to Virginia later this month, this was probably the last time that Edie and Eli will see their “cousin.” As we walked through her neighborhood, Ellen pointed out some good and bad things. Probably the most interesting was the guy who seems to be building his own version of the Winchester Mystery House out of the pieces of salvaged Victorian homes. We figured it would probably be cheaper to buy food in Portland than on the coast, so we went to Safeway. I found this an unnerving experience. The place was emptier than Ralphs at 3:00 AM. Yet when we went to the checkout the clerk remarked on how busy it was that morning! It made both of us aware of how much as Angelinos we are accustomed to constant crowds.

We left Portland just before noon. As John drove us towards the Ross Island Bridge, I reflected on how many times we have been here in the last few years. Now that Ellen and Mike are leaving, we probably will not be back here for a while. But we certainly have many good memories of time spent here on the banks of the Willamette.

With the unfailing help of Daniel, our Garmin GPS, we drove out towards coast. As we drove towards Beaverton, the sky grew grayer and grayer. We passed farms and then the land grew more forested. As we entered the mountains, though, we could see many swaths of clear-cut forest. It was a reminder that forest products are still an important  part of the Oregon economy. It is not all Intel chips and microbreweries. The higher we went in the Coast Range,  the more it began to drizzle and we wondered what it would be like on the coast.

But the gloom lifted as we approached Cannon Beach and as we looked out over the water we saw lovely sunlight. We walked the dogs down to the sand. They were so excited!

The sand here is quite white and fine. We went to the far end of the beach where there were quite a few dogs off-leash and let them frolic in the waves.

We drove a few miles south of Cannon Beach to Oswald West State Park. This is one of the most unspoiled parts of the Oregon coast, and the temperate rain forest comes right down to the beach here as it no doubt did until the arrival of the American settlers in the nineteenth century. Dogs are supposed to be on-leash here, but Edie never follows the rules.

Eli went chasing after his ball as usual. He liked the spot where the creek met the ocean.

Edie found a high rock and played King of the Hill.

Eli, meanwhile, found a young admirer who threw the ball to him.

Edie found a waterfall, and decided to pose for pictures.

But, after a couple hours of fun, it was time to leave. They reluctantly headed up the hill towards Highway 101.

From Oswald West, we headed south towards Netarts. We passed through some pretty communities around Nehalem Bay, and then oddly Daniel sent us inland for a while. When we turned again onto Coast Highway, we were just coming into Tillamook. We drove on from there to Netarts and found out cottage without any difficulty.

The Doe Hill cottage is about as basic as you can get. It is a just an A frame with a deck around it. But it does have a view of the distant beach, it is about 500 feet off the highway. After we unpacked our things, we walked down to the beach. As we arrived on the shore, we looked around and remembered that we had been in this area a few years ago. It is a long beach and it took us about two hours to walk up and down the length of it. As we did, Eli ran after his ball and Edie played her game of trying to distract him. We were stunned by the mount of development that has taken place on the cliffs above the beach. The entire length is covered with large vacation homes, all done in the same cedar shingle style. Each house appears to be at least 4000 square feet, and I doubt it there is much more than five feet in between each of the houses. It looked like a favela for rich people.

It was getting dark as we came to the end of the walk. The tide was coming in, and some people had built a small fire on top of a rock. as the water began to surround the rock, it began to seem like an enormous elementary school science fair volcano.

Tomorrow, more beach adventures.

Sunny Sunday

It was cloudy and cool when I woke up today. I had a cup of coffee with Mike – also an early riser- and I walked all three dogs around a bit. I then borrowed Mike’s bicycle and headed downtown towards Trinity Cathedral. I went a little early to listen to a woman speak on the Rule of Saint Benedict. There is a group at the Cathedral called the Cornerstone Community attempts to be a monastic community in the world. There seemed to be a bit of a contradiction in this, but certainly elements of Benedictine spirituality can be adapted for lay people. It was an interesting talk. After that, I stayed for the Eucharist. The church was surprisingly full for July. I estimate that the building seats about 800 and I would guess that there were a little under 600 present. The sermon was utterly uninspiring.

After the Eucharist, I met up with John. We walked over to 23rd Avenue, the trendy shopping area for the Northwest Portland neighborhood. We had a lovely – and remarkably inexpensive – lunch at Papa Haydn’s. I like Northwest. It seems like a more relaxed version of Soho or the Upper East Side. The residents of many Portland neighborhoods make me think of the song “I Wish I Could Go Back to College” from Avenue Q. The people who live in Northwest seem to have moved on in their lives.

In the afternoon we went to the Portland Art Museum. In all of our trips to the Rose City, we have never paid a visit here. Our loss: it’s a pretty good collection for a small city! The main building looks rather like a post office, but the art is more important the building housing it.

There was a traveling exhibit of California plein air landscapes, mostly from the Irvine Museum. We were both struck by the painting borrowed from a private collector of railroad tracks near Acton.

Much of the museum of devoted to contemporary art. This is a logical choice for a museum trying to build up a major collection quickly. The museum annexed the old Masonic Temple and it is devoted only to works by contemporary arts.

In the evening we went to the Lakewood Theater in Lake Oswego to see See How They Run. This is a World War II British comedy – more of a farce, really – about the goings on in a vicarage somewhere in the country. It is not a great work of theater by any means, but it is entertaining enough. We went to see Natalie Stringer, the daughter of a good friend of Mike’s, who was the ingénue. She was good! You can see an excerpt from the production below.

See How They Run

Tomorrow, we leave for the coast.

Fair Day

Today was generally a pretty quiet day, but it started off with a bang. Ellen and Mike live in Southeast Portland, a young, hipper neighborhood like Echo Park or Sunset Junction. They are a couple blocks north of Division Street. When I first came to Portland, Division Street was a fairly dreary commercial stretch with little to recommend it except for the presence of Pok Pok, Portland’s best-known Thai restaurant. In recent years, however, it has become a hotbed of what David Brooks called the “bohemian bourgeoisie” and there are now dozens of interesting restaurants and stores up and down the street. About a half dozen mixed use projects are planned for the street, and a couple of them are already under construction.

Each year the merchants and neighborhood associations put on a street fair. It starts out with a parade.

A drum band lead the way and these pales lasses, who looked like the customers of the vampire bar in True Blood, twirled flags and batons.

Not all the participants were so unwholesome. This charming little fairy tossed fruit candies to the bystanders.

The usual assortment of politicians were there, and in Portland style there were more bikes than you might normally see. There was also some contention on display as members of the neighborhood association protested the city’s decision to allow developers to build apartments on the street with no parking. This is based on the assumption that everybody will bike or take public transit. That seems a little far-fetched to me, too.

Ellen and Mike spent the day hard at work on their house. Ellen has done a great deal in recent years with the gardening as you can see below.

Mike continued his work building the new rental unit in back.

In the afternoon, Ellen took a break and she and I rode bikes along the Sweetwater trail to the charming neighborhood of Sellwood. I didn’t bring the camera along, but I found this photo of the bike path right as you come to the Sellwood bridge.

We walked up and down 13th Avenue, the main commercial thoroughfare, and we had ice teas, after an interminable wait, at Jade.

In the evening, Mike and Ellen took John and I to dinner at Avignon, a local wine bar. The food was delicious. Other than John accidentally setting his napkin on fire, it was a perfect evening!

On the Road

If you asked the dogs about today, they would just have yawned. It was a mostly a travel day, and travel days are not that exciting for canines or humans.

We spent the early morning cleaning up after ourselves. Vacation rentals have taken to charging security deposits, and I was determined to leave the place in just as good condition as we found it. I was also determined we would not forget the camera, either! Ellen helped me thoroughly clean the Abrams Cottage. John packed the car while she and I took the dogs for one last visit to the dog park.

We drove for a couple hours and stopped in Roseburg for lunch. John and I had done this on a previous trip, and when we mentioned to Ellen that we had found – courtesy or Urban Spoon – a decent Greek place there, she was all in favor of a repeat visit. It turned out that Ellen had actually never been to Roseburg, so I explained about how most of the downtown had been destroyed by a blast from a truck loaded with nitro in 1959. Unfortunately, there is little charm in the rebuilt downtown and the area seems like one of the most economically depressed in Oregon.

From Roseburg, John turned the driving duties over to me and I continued on into Portland. We were stuck for about 45 minutes in horrendous traffic near Eugene. Apparently several cars, including one carrying a boat trailer, had been in a serious accident.

We arrive in Portland around five o’clock. Mike, Ellen husband, has been busy building a rental unit in the back of their property. When they move to Virginia, they will rent out both the house and this “ADU” (planning talk for “additional dwelling unit”). They hope to come back to Portland and stay in the ADU in the summers if Ellen in not teaching. Mike has made a lot of progress on this. The walls and the roof are all up, and windows and doors will be in soon.

Jill, a long-time friend of Mike and Ellen’s, came over for a visit. She is the second person on the left. Jill is a really smart and interesting person. John and I spent an afternoon at her house a couple years ago. Ellen ordered pizza and we had a pleasant supper on the back patio.

Parties

After two plays yesterday, we all had a slow start to the morning. But we had a full day of Ashland adventures planned, as usual.

We started off with a walking tour of the city. John had found this one a brochure somewhere, and we have sometimes had good experiences with free local walking tours. This really was not one of those.

Our guide, shown in the picture below on the right, was certainly sincere. But her presentation of the history of the town was a little bit scattered at times and it was not always easy to follow her narrative. 

We started off at the lower end of Lithia Park, and for the most part we simply walked up the street next to the park and walked down through the park. This does contain not only some of Ashland’s most historic homes, but some of its most beautifully restored as well. Ellen found landscaping ideas along the way.

Probably the most interesting thing we learned on the trip was about lithia water. I knew that people had come to Ashland to drink the spring water for their health. Until this trip, however, I never understood that it was for their mental health. Lithia water is simply water containing lithium, the drug still widely used today for the treatment of manic depressive patients, and people drank the water for its mood-altering powers.

Lithium was also, I learned, an ingredient in the original formula for 7-Up. The name now makes sense:  it was supposed to make you feel “up” because you were imbibing psychiatric medication with each swallow. All all of this without having to worry about an insurance co-pay.

Today was another marathon theater day. Neither of the plays, unfortunately, was as good as All the Way.

In the afternoon we saw Party People. This play is about two young men, one black and one Hispanic, who are the children of former revolutionaries from the 60’s. One is the child of a Black Panther leader, now in jail, and in the other is the nephew of one of the Young Lords. Right away my mind started to do some simple subtraction and I wondered how these boys could have been born in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s and be in their mid-twenties today. But that was just the beginning of the problems with the play. The idea is that these boys are putting together some kind of gallery opening with pictures and video of the revolutionaries. They plan to invite all of these people to the opening – apparently nobody else has been notified about this art show – where they will confront their elders … about something. Jimmy, the character shown in the publicity still below is a nebbish with a MacBook, but, when the guests show up he dressed like a clown and suddenly has an aggressive personality. His jibes reverberate courtesy only of a microphone and audio special effects:  the words themselves have no real bite to them.

About a dozen characters wander through the play and deliver monologues. A couple seem to connect with each other, but others seem to have no purpose at all. For example, right after intermission, a young black woman sings a song in Spanish. We never find out who she is or how she is related to anybody else. As best as I could follow it, the song was about slaves being transported from Africa to the Americas, though what “caracoles” – conch – had to do with it was unclear to me. A character appears who discussed his suicide. Huh? The white woman shown in the picture castigates one of the revolutionaries for killing her husband, a police officer, forty years earlier. How exactly had she heard about this opening when nobody from the Village Voice had? Never explained.

Nor is the play willing to take any stand about the former leaders. At one point, a story is told about how a couple of the Panthers had tortured another one for supposedly being a police informant. Yet a gruesome as the details of this are, they not really condemned for it. The older Black Panther maintains that he did not kill the police officer, but was framed for it by the police. And that seems to be the closest the play can come to assigning some kind of blame for the chaos of those years. It is all the fault of a nameless establishment. But then the two young characters suggest that the revolutionaries needed to use media to convey their message. They confidently assert that YouTube and Twitter will help them help the people. This is historical nonsense. The Black Panthers were masters of media manipulation.

There were two older women sitting next to me in the theater. At the interval, one said to the other, “Is there anything I can get you?” The other woman immediately shot back, “Yes. A cup of hemlock!” My feelings exactly.

The evening play featured a much different kind of party. This was Ashland’s revival of Animal Crackers, the 1928 musical that George Kaufman wrote for the Marx Brothers. The play all revolves around the antics at a Long Island mansion where a famous painting is stolen and a couple forgeries put in its place. The story line really makes no sense at all; the play simply provided a structure for a series of classic Marx Brothers jokes and routines.

I wanted to like this play, and I found little fault with the actors. They had lots of energy and they appropriately improvised some jokes and shtick in classic Marx Brothers style. But I ultimately found that seeing the play added nothing to watching the movie, and I failed to really figure out why it should rise again as a stage play. Since the play was really written for the Marx Brothers, it seems best to watch them do it, not watch other actors imitate them doing it.

All the Way

Today we saw two plays, one good, one almost great. That didn’t leave us much time for anything else!

In the afternoon we saw Romeo and Juliet. Photography is not allowed in the theater, so the only visual I could find for this was this graphic from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival website. It gives an idea of the basic twist of this production: the “star-crossed lovers” are Californios living just after the American conquest. Now the more California history you know, the less sense this makes, but it does allow the director to stick in a few words of Spanish like “venga aqui, mi hija” and to draw attention to the Hispanic actors. This kind of thing is easy to deride for political correctness, but I doubt that is the point of it. All arts organizations are looking at demographic trends and unless you can make Hispanics, blacks, and Asians feel comfortable in your auditorium, your future is limited.

Generally, while the change of setting added little to the production (other than allowing them to use some lovely mid-nineteenth century costumes) it did not detract from it, either. Daniel José Molina, the young actor who played Romeo, was absolutely terrific. Jason Rojas was an utterly amazing Mercutio. I was less enchanted with Alejandra Escalante who seemed at times a little wooden as Juliet. But it was overall a solid and completely enjoyable performance.

We returned to the Green Show in the evening. Dance Kaleidoscope was again the featured company. This time they did a program of dance inspired by Motown hits. John had put down our blanket after Romeo and Juliet, so we had front-row seats. Somehow we did not bring the camera for this.

Our final play of the day was All the Way by Robert Schenkkan. This production is the world premiere of a play which deserves to be widely produced. The play depicts the first eleven months of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, focusing on his struggle to both pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his desire to be elected in his own right to the Presidency. This is that real historic moment in the oval office, though the scene from the play looked remarkably similar.

Schenkkan is best know for his Pulitzer Prize winning Kentucky Cycle. In his liner notes for this play, he reflected on why he wrote the All the Way.

This play, like so many of the History Plays of Shakespeare is a meditation on Power. It begins in November 1963 with LBJ's sudden ascension to the Presidency following Kennedy's assassination and ends 12 months later with LBJ's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. I see this period as a hinge point in American politics. Everything changes. And the modern political landscape is wrenchingly born.

The play fundamentally deals with change and compromise as a political realities. Some characters resist change altogether. Others embrace change, but are unwilling to compromise. Johnson and King understand that both are inevitable. This sense of the impurity and messiness of political life and the moral ambiguities of political aspirations are what make the play more than a docudrama about civil rights.

Jack Willis was absolutely astonishing as President Lyndon Baines Johnson as was  Jonathan Haugen as Gov. George Wallace. Kenajuan Bentley quite credibly played  Martin Luther King Jr., a fairly thankless role when you character has been elevated to modern sainthood. Villains and morally ambiguous characters are much more fun to watch and must be much more fun to play. Peter Frechetteas was decent as Senator Hubert Humphrey, though you got little sense of why he was referred to as a “happy warrior” at the time.

John is sure that this play will be an HBO special sometime soon, and I think he may be right.

Mixing Things Up

We took our time leaving Mt Shasta today. It is not far from Shasta to Ashland, and our cottage was not available until late afternoon. So we had a leisurely breakfast, walked the dogs around a bit, and packed up carefully. We are determined not to leave the camera behind again!

There is a nice park just on the outskirts of Mt Shasta simply called Mt Shasta City Park. From 1920 to 1940, it was the summer campus of Chico State Teachers College. The old dining hall and some of the dormitories, handsome redwood buildings constructed in the rustic style, still stand in the park. Teachers apparently spent the summer in this Arcadian paradise improving their professional skills.  Now the best we can only hope for is a conference room in a Marriot with some stale Danish pastry.

The springs which form the headwaters of the Sacramento River are the centerpiece of the park. People come from all over to fill up bottles with the fresh, cold water from the melting glaciers on the mountain. Ellen had to try a sample of the water for herself.


Heading north from Mt Shasta, the road rises sharply and then levels out into a broad, somewhat arid plain. The landscape is covered with the remnants of ancient volcanic eruptions and cattle grave on the brown grass in between the black lava flows which still scar the land.

Yreka is the main settlement in this area. Yreka, which supposedly means “White Mountain” in the local native language, enjoyed a short boom in the early 1850’s when gold was discovered nearby. Not all that much seems to have happened there in the next century, and there is a small main street of historic nineteenth century buildings. None of the structures are particularly significant, and they are filled with the usual kinds of shops one finds in small, struggling towns. John went into the sporting good store, and the owner was quite happy to chat with him for a bit.


Yreka also regards itself as the capital of the State of Jefferson. In an episode of American history not widely known outside of this area, several southern Oregon counties and several northern California counties, all feeling neglected by their respective state governments, proposed seceding and creating a new state in 1941. Even without the outbreak of the Second World War, this proposal would have never been successful, but it lives on here in the way that only small communities can recall their grievances. Ellen decided however that a “State of Jefferson” license plate frame would be perfect for her when she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, and she found one in a local store.

From Yreka we climbed rapidly through the Siskiyou Pass and then descended into Ashland. We will be here in Ashland for three night while we see five plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

We are staying at the Abrams Cottage. We’ve stayed here a couple times before. It used to be owned by a guy named Nils Hansen and not only did he charge less than everybody else in Ashland for a small rental house, but he seemed pretty casual about even getting paid for it. One time I recall he just said to leave a check on the kitchen table when we left. It has since been purchased by a couple from Napa and they have cleaned up the place a bit but are also more traditional in billing and the like.

One of the best things about the cottage is the fenced-in front yard, perfect for dogs.

We unpacked and then went down to the the Green Show. The performance today was by Dance Kaleidoscope, a modern dance troupe from Indianapolis. They are doing a couple programs here in Ashland. The once today was an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet set to the Tchaikovsky music. It was pretty good. 


Our play this evening was Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. This was, well, interesting. Basically, somewhat abbreviated versions of Euripides’ Medea, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella  were performed on the same stage more or less at the same time. At times, the characters from one play began to move into another play. There were a few times this was effective. The Cinderella sisters, for example, at one point also doubled as the Macbeth witches. But I failed to notice how they all stemmed from any kind of overarching metanarrative or how this exercise in intertextuality really provided any illumination into any one of the stories.  The best way I found to accept the production was to imagine that I had taken a couple slugs of codeine-laden cough syrup and I was sitting in bed switching channels on the television.

Tomorrow, we have more traditional fare with Romeo and Juliet  and a new play about Lyndon Johnson.

Volcanic Legacy

We are staying in Mount Shasta at the Dream Inn. It’s a pretty odd place; there is a main house which functions as a more traditional bed and breakfast, and then there is a stucco house next to it with two “suites”. We stayed at the one downstairs last year which has a living room done in knotty pine dominated by a large bar. The suite upstairs, where we stayed this year, looks like grandmother just moved out.

The breakfasts are not particularly memorable, but in warm weather – and we certainly had that during our stay in Shasta – you can have it outside in the gazebo.

John wanted Ellen to come to Shasta so she could have a chance to see Mossbrae Falls. It’s not easy to get to these falls; in fact, it’s really illegal right now. The only access is along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. We had to walk past lots of “No Trespassing” signs. And I’m supposed to teach children to follow the law….

What makes Mossbrae Falls so amazing is how the falls just emerge from the side of a cliff covered in vegetation. It doesn’t look like any other waterfall I have ever seen anywhere else.

And since you have to walk so far and so illegally to get there, you often have the place to yourself. That made Ellen happy!

Eli chased his ball into the river a few times.

We walked back along the tracks. Another hiker warned us about rattlesnakes, but fortunately we didn’t encounter any of them. We drove around Dunsmuir. A couple years ago it looked like this town was starting to stage a comeback, but it seemed pretty desolate now. We stopped at a Mexican takeout stand and had lunch in the gazebo

In the afternoon Ellen and I went down the main street of Mount Shasta to look at the shops. She was set to buy something, but did not really find much of interest. Mount Shasta has an odd assortment of shops, divided roughly evenly between hunting shops and healing crystal emporiums.

After this, we headed out of town to look at Lake Siskiyou. The lake is not natural; it is a flood control project. But it is remarkably pretty and it offers local people many opportunities for recreation. Jumping off the bridge below seemed to be a local past time. John contemplated doing so for a bit, but then thought better of the idea.

Instead, we went to the shore and gave Eli some more opportunities to chase him ball into the water.

Ellen and John completely confused him by playing keep away. Edie barked a lot.

We had a pretty decent dinner at a local pub. They made enormously large and tasty burgers.

Tomorrow, off to Ashland and the Shakespeare Festival.