From the Road...

We had great beginning Wednesday; 5 eagles, 3 heron, several hawks and the ubiquitous and undervalued ravens, all within 20 kms driving through Delta/Surrey. We went through the Peace Arch with our new Nexus cards, almost without incident (there was s pesky stop sign that we didn’t see that might have gotten us arrested) and then had smooth sailing. With clear skies the 4 major volcanic mountains, Baker, Rainier, St Helens, and Hood were spectacular as was Mt McLoughin, which we`d never heard of, near Medford.  The traffic through Seattle was relentless but it was sunny and warm and everyone behaved well.  Jim is still laughing at me for ordering a Slam breakfast at Denny’s which was so enormous it was delivered on 3 plates. Obviously I didn’t eat it all which feels like an insult to the person who grew the food and the person who prepared it. We had about a 45 minute delay through Portland because of an accident in the northbound lanes that had traffic at a virtual standstill for 5 hours. Ugh. We were complaining about slow traffic and the person who caused the slowdown was probably dying.  Our motel in Wilsonville is a good spot and we had a happy evening at an Italian restaurant where the owner shared of his favourite Napa watering holes with us. Looking forward to tomorrow!

We thought it was a forsythia, but it`s a witch hazel, which they seem to `do`in Ashland!

Tomorrow is now behind us and it was Jim’s turn to have a ridiculous meal option; a cinnamon roll that came on a platter. I think we’ve both been well reminded of portion size! It was another gorgeous day and we arrived in Ashland about 2:00, so had a good look around having never been here before. With time on our hands we went to True Grit which was okay but not outstanding. The actors did well and the last half hour was intense but a lot of it was boring – probably true to what life would have been like. Now we are tucked in for the night and tomorrow on to Calistoga, CA for a weekend of wine tasting.

Mt Shasta, about 9:30am 

and later

WAY too much of the tasting this evening and way too much food! Yikes. Luckily our hotel, Calistoga Lodge is a few steps from downtown so at least we are walking a bit to work it off. Otherwise I’ll be dead by tomorrow! We had fabulous views of Mt Shasta this morning and lots of mountain driving to bring us down to Calistoga. 

We’d forgotten that we’d been here before until we were walking down the main drag this afternoon; luckily we had liked it very much and talked about the possibility of coming back.  This is the last weekend of the winter package enticing folks to the wineries and we lucked into the local ``passport`` package at 2 for $25.00 instead of $50.00 each. They paid for themselves in the first half hour which makes Jim very happy!