Ashford & Medford, Oregon

Wed & Thur - Nov. 3rd & 4th

View of Mt. McLoughlin 9,495 ft. as we were driving south toward Grant's Pass.




Headquarters of Harry and David's at Medford, the world's gourmet fruit and food gift company. They give $5.00 bus tours of their farm and factory by reservation. Check them out at www.harryanddavid.com. I bought my favorites, chocolate and wine.

Rogue Creamery at Central Point is famous for their blue cheese. We bought John's favorites, cheese curds and beer. Check them out at www.roguecreamery.com.

Historic Jacksonville Cemetery started in 1850s. Sometimes we just find cemeteries an interesting place to walk thru. One man's grave stone said, "Killed by Indians."

Different sections of the cemetery were marked with street signs like this for Oddfellows, City, Jewish, Catholic and Paupers.

Then there was the Redman section. We had never heard of this organization, so I just included the signs, in case anyone else was interested in reading about them.

Jacksonville is also home to the Britt Gardens Jazz Festival that is held outdoors on a hillside in Britt Park, just a short walk from the cemetery. It was the hillside estate of Peter Britt, a photographer who came during the gold rush in the 1850s.

Lithia Park in Ashland starts right downtown next to the Shakespeare Theater where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival takes place for about 8 months a year and has been going on since 1935.

There are many miles of trails in the park. We hiked along the Ashland Creek for a couple of hours and up a hill for views of the city. What an incredibly beautiful hike!

This town is just overflowing with theaters, art galleries, wineries, breweries, B & Bs, boutique shops and nifty and elegant places to eat. You get the idea, a very neat town, but you could spend a lot of money here.

We did some hiking at a couple of other places, including along the Rogue River below the Table Rock mesas, but the pictures are all from Lithia Park.

The beautiful surroundings reminded me of Robert Frost poems I remember from when I was a kid.

This is when we hiked uphill for views of the town.

You can see a bit of the Shakespeare Theater above the trees here.

What a great place to spend my birthday! And to top it off, John said to me, "We're as Tight as Twin Fiddles in a Bob Wills Band". How sweet. Then he admitted it was the title of a song, but he couldn't remember who sang it. I bet Mark knows, don't you?

I could just sit here all day, which is what some people appeared to be doing.

This is at the town square at the entrance to the park. The statue has drinking fountains on each side. It was believed or claimed to be healing mineral waters. The smaller set of fountains was added later, with 8 fountains, when they were trying to promote the fame of their healing waters. Unfortunately, due to the water's pungent taste and aroma, the plan didn't succeed. We tasted it and it was really bad.

We drove thru Scenic River Memorial Park near our campground on our way home. We thought this stone was interesting. Why would someone buy a stone for nobody?

Back home and heading for California tomorrow.
Just one more piece of that peanut butter fudge before I go to bed.

Goodnight.

Tarra