After arriving at Suzanne and John's home in Ashland on Thursday afternoon, we spent Friday morning leisurely lounging around, then were given an afternoon tour of the many different areas of town. What a beautiful town. The aged architecture of the buildings downtown have been wonderfully restored, and there is a wide variety of shops and restaurants.
The primary draw of out of town visitors to Ashland is the Shakespeare Festival. As I understand it, the Festival runs annually, February through November. Top notch.
On Saturday, John (with my assistance), loaded and strapped the bikes onto his pick-up truck and we were driven the 200 miles to Eugene. I was thinking during the drive that had we been on a coast-to-coast ride, that accepting a 200 mile "lift" would be unthinkable. This ride does not have that sense of a "point-to-point" feeling, so not having to ride that 200 miles is perfectly okay with me.
On Saturday afternoon and Sunday, the rest days continued. Kim spent time with some friends she met back in 2012, when she was passing through Eugene on her cross-country ride. I spent the days visiting with Nancy O'Brien, whom I have known for many a year and visited often when passing through Eugene. Very pleasant days, with a liberal dose of stops at the local ice cream parlor ... Nancy knows my weakness for rich flavorable ice cream. Movie, shopping, music-in-the-park, and of course great food ... wonderful rest days.
Yesterday Kim and I got back on the road riding the 45 miles north to Corvallis. 45 miles of extremely flat riding, starting with about 8 miles of multi-use paths along side the Willamette River (adjacent photo). For the most part, the remainder of the ride was on a low-traffic road that traveled through farm land, orchards, vineyards and berry patches. Very nice easy way to ease back into the daily riding pattern.
Today we head toward the Pacific Coast, with Astoria being the next major goal. Looking forward to seeing the ocean once again.
And ... we are moving on.
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