#165 Crater Lake

While researching and making my plan for this visit the NPS website basically said, “May?  You’re going in May?  Why would you go in May?  You should come back in July – September.”  The roads were clear and the day was warm, but the snow was also twelve feet tall.  


What this meant in all practicality was that you couldn’t see the lake.  I stopped at the gift shop and from the 3rd floor you could kind of peek the lake.  Many people were climbing the snow drifts (even though signs said it wasn’t safe), but I wasn’t gonna be one of them.  


Luckily for me, there was a kid taking his lunch break by the windows, and we started talking and I found out he has some family in Spanish Fork.  As we were chatting he said that if I drove to the lodge and then walked around to the back there were great views of the lake.  So that’s what I did, and I got some great pictures there.  I also started talking to Wanda and Dave who were there from Washington.  Dave gets the photo credit of me by the wall of snow.  
















The Rim road was also only open to Discovery Point, but I was able to get some great picture there from a different angle.  Close ups of Wizard Island and the interior coast.











On my way back to Medford, my cell did not have service.  This is important because I usually use it to navigate (since I have no sense of direction), but I knew that I needed to be on 62 West for, like 50 miles, so I thought I could manage. 

The real issue here is that Google Maps shows the speed limit. The reason this is important is that I got pulled over for going 45 in a 35.  Luckily, the Sheriff cut me a break and let me go without a ticket – he even joked that he has a buddy in Texas and knows we have insane speed limits (there are several 2 lane roads with a 70mph limit, for example) so please, just slow down.  Honestly, I was thinking that I was driving really conservatively – believing the speed limit was 45 – and  I’d just restarted Google maps, so I was actually thinking I was getting pulled over for “texting” and driving.  Phew.  Must have been my lucky day.  


Anyway, Crater Lake is beautiful – it’s crazy blue (the pictures don’t do it justice) and the trees looked crazy green, and with a backdrop of the snow….just look at the beautiful scenery.

#164 Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The OSF is a Tony-award winning festival that is American’s largest and longest celebration of “The Bard”.   Eleven plays are presented annually, 4 by Shakespeare and 7 by various others.  There are also backstage tours, lectures, discussion groups, and one very quaint little town.

I saw 3 plays (no-Shakespeare), with an option to squeeze a couple in the second week of my stay.  (Spoiler Alert: the first three were so good, that I ended up buying tickets for the other two.)

Cambodian Rock Bank – Could not recommend more highly.  This was originally not on my list, but then I read Geraldine’s review and immediately bought tickets.  The only thing I can add to her review is this – it was unexpectedly funny, in additional to the gut-wrenching tragedy.

Hairspray – recommend.  I’ve never seen any incarnation of Hairspray, and didn’t actually know very much about it.  I thought it was fun and timely….so many things rang true about today’s society, and the performers were just so stellar (especially Greta Oglesby as Motormouth Maybelle), but the highlight of the show for me was being able to see Matt Goodrich conduct the show.  

Listening to Gillian’s stellar interviews - on The Hamilcast - with all sort of folks who come together to make Hamilton happen every day has definitely given me a new appreciation of all the people who put in hard work to make a show come together night after night.

Mother Road -  recommend.  This might be the darkest play I saw.  It focuses on a the last of the Jode family who is searching for a long-lost descendant of his brother to inherit the family farm in Oklahoma.  It’s a super dark look at the pain in our shared (and separate) history, and how leaving and returning home can be a powerful and healing experience.

Between Two Knees – partially recommend.  This was overall a pretty fun offering, especially since its purpose was to talk about the abysmal treatment of Native Americans throughout history.  

The story tells the family history between and first and second battles of Wounded Knee and promises to be as “as accurate as a 1970s American History textbook”.  

There were parts of this play that seemed like they were either trying to be funny, but missed (especially since other parts were knee-slapping hilarious) or were trying to be serious, and didn’t quite hit the emotional mark.  

But hey, the play started by telling the audience that “you must already sort of feel guilty, otherwise you wouldn’t be at the Indian play” and ended with aliens descending and the cast singing “Goodbye white people.  Some of you were ok, most of you are not.”

As You Like It - I feel obligated to recommend, because Shakespeare.  This was the longest (or at least felt the longest) and the director decided to make some of the roles women instead of men to give women more opportunities, but I spent at least half the play wondering if some of the actors were men in drag.  What I did like was the lead, actress who really made The Bard's word come alive with actual emotion and hilarious physical acting.  Overall it was good, but definitely my least favorite.

#163 California Wine Country

I looked at the wine train and it was so $$ that I started looking around for other options and settled on Platypus tours.  That, my friends, was a great decision.  

Platypus specialized in visiting smaller wineries and work with them to keep their tasting fees pretty low.  (Which is especially great if you don’t really like wine and are just crossing something off your list.)  

Our guide was knowledgeable, and kept us informed and entertained without being corny or annoying.  A guide can make or break any tour, so I really lucked out with this one.

Napa is beautiful, the wine was fine (I still don’t like it), and the other ladies on the tour were great.  We visited 4 wineries with the last being my favorite.

Our first stop was Silenus, a custom crush winery.  

Custom crush means they also rent out their crush pad to other smaller winemakers or individuals.  This is also where we were introduced to the term “patio pounder” which denotes a wine that your basically sit on your patio and drink and drink and drink. 

Next up, David Fulton, a winery that has been run by the same family for 5 or 6 generations.  Our host was the 5^th great-grandson of the founder and joked that he looks like the painting that hangs in the tasting room.  He also joked that the great-grandfather looked simultaneously like him and Will Ferrell.  True.

We had lunch on their deck overlooking the vines and it was absolutely delightful.


After lunch, most everyone was feeling the “fun”.  Each tasting was about 4 samples each, and several people bought a glass or 3 for lunch.  I did not as I am a notorious lightweight and don’t really love wine. If you’re going to patio pound, a nice cider is much better, in my opinion.  

We stopped at the famous “Napa” sign for a photo op.  One of the girls is prone to motion sickness and puked her guts out at this stop, then barely hung on until she called an Uber at the next winery.  So, we lost 3 people there.

At Rutherford Ranch the tasting was a wine and chocolate pairing.  The chocolate was delicious.

Our final stop, Razi, this was probably my favorite, not because of the wine.  It was still wine, but we were his last tour of the day so it was a more leisurely stop.  We sat and chatted for quite a while, and for those who did enjoy the wine he was pouring very freely trying, I assume, to finish the bottles by end of day so they didn’t go to waste.

After we were dropped back at the Napa Valley Welcome Center, I grabbed dinner at Basalt and had bread and tomato soup for dinner.  The tomato soup was so good.  Like, seriously, so good. 

The next day, it was good-bye to California and off to Oregon for the next month.

#162 A Tour on San Francisco’s Cable Cars

I’m including a whole bunch on non-Cable Car-y stuff in this entry.  Initially I was looking at a tour to Alcatraz, but I waited too long and tickets weren’t available for the day I was going to be in San Francisco proper.  

As I thought through it I decided a harbor cruise might be really what I was looking for and ended up booking something that covered a trip to Muir Woods, Sausalito, and Harbor Cruise.

I thought I was being so prepared because the tour started very near Union Square which is basically a stop on one of the Powell-line cable cars, and the tour ended at Pier 39 which is very near the beginning of both Powell-lines.  

So my plan was that I would park near the tour start and then ride a cable car back to about 2 blocks of the parking lot.  Seems fool-proof, right? 

Yeah it turns out that both Powell lines are under construction and were offering substitute buses instead of the cable cars.  So, I’m still crossing this off because I tried really hard to make it work, but San Francisco just wouldn’t cooperate.

Not a cable car

Muir Woods

Dedicated to John Muir – known as the father of  our national parks – who as a advocate for the preservation and conservation of America’s natural treasures.  Muir Woods is the first National Monument to be created solely from a single land donation (by William Kent – who insisted it be name for John Muir).  The literature talks about stepping back in time, but this place is very much a living, breathing part of the present, and a truly remarkable place to visit.

Sausalito – I couldn’t care less.  I’m not really a wander around and window shop kinda traveler, so basically I sat in a park on the waterfront and waited until everyone got back.

Harbor Cruise – awesome. I love boats.  If I were suddenly independently wealth I would for sure buy a boat.