DAY 231 SUNDAY 27th APRIL 2008

Ashland, Oregon (Miles to Date: 22510)

When Mark had arranged to come to the Treesort he had not realised that it was as close as it was (if you can call 80 miles close) to the city of Ashland, the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Company. Well as soon as Karen found out she was on the phones seeing what tickets were still available. Luckily there were 4 tickets left for Saturday evenings’ performance of Midsummer Nights Dream – which was an ideal play as Jack and Emily’s introduction to Shakespeare.

We arrived early in Ashland to have a look around the town and to check in our hotel for the night. The town is very much oriented around the Shakespeare festival which runs from March through early November, but there a host of other things going with other festivals, theatres and events. We find a wonderful café called Zoey’s that provided a wonderful lunchtime selection of sandwiches, wraps and calzones, and a fantastic flavour selection of ice creams and gelatos. Of course we have to sample their offerings, especially the ice cream. From here we head back to the hotel for an afternoon snooze, before the evening performance. Unfortunately we are so dogged tired we almost over slept and had to rush back into to town, gobble a quick sandwich and head off to the theatre.

The presentation of Midsummer Night Dream was in modern dress but followed the traditional script. Puck and the other fairies we all men, dressed like something out of Rocky Horror show in tutus, fishnet tights and platform shoes. Wonderfully camp!! They also used a lot of contemporary music and dance throughout the performance, with much of it in a disco theme. The other main characters like the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, and the Athenians, Theseus, Hippolyta, Lysander, Hermia, Demtrius and Helena were fabulous. Our favourite characters having said all this were Bottom and his fellow thespians were full of character with excellent comic timing thrown in. Their entrance on to stage was in a multi-coloured VW camper van and dressed like hippies. The cast was magnificent and it was one of the best interpretations us grown-up Hoblets had seen and to our delight Jack and Emily loved it even though they had some trouble following the Shakespearian script.

After staying overnight in Ashland we took the long drive back to Cave Junction and the Treeresort. Jack and Emily were desperate to have one more afternoon playing around the farm. Fortunately a whole load of new guests had arrived for us to get to know. One of our greatest pleasures has been getting to know new people from the deliciouly friendly staff to most of the guests. As you might expect with this not being your normal bed and breakfast most visitors are the more adventurous sorts - and quite a lot of families. In fact when we arrived we were told that they were expecting 8 biker chicks which got Mark all excited, but when these ladies from the Motor Maids (the oldest women's cycle club in the USA turned up) he was disappointed to see they were all in the autumn years of life. Having said that they were lovely and had some real life to them. On returning from Ashland we met Michael and his son Eric from San Rafael in California. Jack and Eric struck up a friendship in no time based on their geeky love of computer games, which they managed to find enough to talk about for hours and hours. Mindyou with Emily entertaining herself with horses, dogs and our friend Rachel it gave us some time to get to know Michael and the others around the campfire.