"Our Ashland Oregon Adventure" by Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)
On the morning of Thursday, July 27th, 2023, Mariah and I loaded some stuff into our beat-up Ford Escape (it's seen some shit), and headed for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR.
But FIRST, we had to stop by a USPS box and drop off our most recent batch of postcards (going out.):
[photo by Mariah Yates]
Then we grabbed a coffee for Mariah and hit the freeway. We were thinking (and quite wrong) that the trip was going to take about four and a half to five hours... Nope. We hit traffic going thru Portland AND thru Eugene, plus snack and restroom breaks, so even though we left Longview at about 8:00 A.M., we didn't pull into the hotel parking lot until around 3:30 P.M.!!! (Ack...)
We stayed at the Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites. We've stayed there once before (about two years ago), and we will undoubtedly stay there again! (We took photos, which I'll share below, but first...)
After snagging some dinner, it was time to do what we've been talking about doing for THIRTY YEARS! We had a taxi pick us up at the hotel and drop us at the Allen Elizabethan Theatre so we could catch a play as part of the OREGON SHAKESPREARE FESTIVAL!
We saw director Dawn Monique Williams' jazz reinterpretation of TWELFTH NIGHT!
The show was fantastic! The lighting was spectacular, the show was funny, and the music was excellent (especially the vocals by Arielle Crosby, who played Feste the Fool - although reimagined as a bar-room singer in a prohibition era, jazz-fantasy version of Illyria.) Mariah says she is hooked and is already planning to get tickets for next year!
I do have to say this, however: Driving for 7+ hours BEFORE going to a 3 hour play isn't my recommendation. The show was great, but my eyes and my ASS wuz TIRED by the time our taxi got us back to the hotel so we could sleep...
The next day, Friday, was our chill-out day. We walked across the street to the Oak Tree and had a pretty decent "greasy spoon" breakfast, then camped by the pool for a few hours!
I drew and wrote and read a book while Mariah alternated between laying in the sun and relaxing in the pool. (She tried the hot-tub, but it was TOO hot, so she just soaked her feet for a bit.) Honestly, it was a great way to spend the day. You'll maybe notice my "iced coffee" in the picture above? Mariah actually made that, and it was more of an IRISH coffee, if you know what I mean... [I know I said I was going to cut the booze, but we wuz on vacation!]
Honestly, that day of just wandering around, relaxing, and exploring the hotel was pretty great. Mariah snapped some pictures of the restaurant / lounge area:
[Yeah, that old dude stealing all the oxygen is me...]
And I grabbed a few snaps of the lobby area:
Overall, we had a great time. It's cool to just explore different places, and there's something to be said for hanging at the resort / hotel that you're staying at and not having to get crazy-expensive transportation all over the place (or face the possibility of your Uber-driver going psycho and trying to murder everyone.) We'll be heading back to Ashland next year! (And, if you were wondering, the drive home took significantly less time, thanks to no car wrecks on the roads.)
I believe our next trip is a return to Lincoln City, Oregon, in a few weeks - and that might be our last excursion for this summer. That's okay. I'm good with just chillin' at home, too...
[Photos taken by either Mariah or me using our old cell phones. Mariah wants a new phone with a better camera, but I want a much worse camera so the pictures look more blurry and weird! We'll see who wins that one!]
Later!
---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)
https://linktr.ee/richardfyates
P.S. - It wouldn't be a REAL trip without grabbing some postcards from our destination, so we DID!
