Entering Oregon (April 7th's post)

Shortly after our stop at Mt. Shasta, we arrived in Ashland, Oregon, a cute college town nestled between national forest land and filled with used bookstores, coffee shops, and local art galleries. It is also the home to a renown Shakespeare festival. Unfortunately, due to a large transient population here (we encountered them protesting downtown), there is no camping in the national forest around Ashland! A few long trips down winding roads led to us dead ends, and we spent our first night in a truck stop in Talent, OR, just north of Ashland. We spent the following sunny day doing laundry, enjoying the cherry blossom lined trails, and studying maps of Oregon.

It turns out that although the park rangers in Ashland are cold and unwelcoming, the rest of the people in Ashland are super friendly. After taking a yoga class in a neat house/yoga studio (with real wood floors and a wood stove to heat the room!), we were invited to stay in the studio parking lot. The teacher of the class is about our age and lives in the room above the studio. He was able to give us great recommendations about places to visit and even invited us to a shore house for the weekend! Unfortunately we declined because traveling to the coast would have put us 6 hours further away from Bend, our next destination. And then, the next morning, Oregon gave us a taste of its weather. We woke up to a light dusting of snow and gray skies. It proceeded to hail/sleet/snow/rain on and off throughout the day. Brrr!

A frozen yoga mat!

We continued north to Jacksonville, a small old mining town, and spent the day exploring trails through a lush, mossy forest, and visiting a farmers' market (not much there yet). We ended up in a secluded camping site near Applegate Lake. Oregon is earning high scores in our book so far (although Colin is unsatisfied with the amount of snow most towns seem to get in the winter). Onward we go!