~Oregon Page~
Capital : Salem Nickname: Beaver State Motto: Alis Volat Propiis ( She Flies With Her Own Wings )
Trip to Southwest Oregon, Aug 12-15, 2016 |
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| We went rafting that Saturday, then to the Trees of Mystery (ok, this is in CA) and the Shakespeare Fest on Sunday - short trip but so fun! | ||
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| While waiting for the shuttle to take us rafting (on the Rogue River, see my rafting page) we saw this. Turns out it is Table Rock - and has hiking trails. Maybe next trip. http://www.southernoregon.com/tablerock/index.html | ||
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| After rafting, on the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a store to get some waters and other provisions. Outside was the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile!!! | Annnnnd.... the Planters Mr. Peanut Mobile. |
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| Turns out it was Mr. Peanut's 100th birthday. They had a cake and everything! | The license plate for the mobile was cute. |
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| The next day, we had several choices, but the front desk person highly recommended Trees of Mystery. Ok, so the trip was supposed to be Oregon focused, and this is in CA, but it was JUST in CA. | Huge statues of Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox. Paul had a speaker and Paul 'talked' to the visitors. The person talking was pretty entertaining. | |
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| Can't read the map? Don't worry - it wasn't helpful. We kept pulling it out all day, and for a couple of "map geeks", it was frustrating and funny. | The Elephant Tree. We had a bit of trouble finding the elephant in the tree. (Maybe that was the mystery?) |
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| One of the things I learned this trip, this growth on the side of a tree is called a Burl. | Didn't have any trouble seeing the "lightening" in this tree. |
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| This is called the Cathedral. There are benches in front of it. They have weddings and Easter services (weather permitting) here. | SkyTrail - per the brochure - "the only six passenger forest gondola on the continent". Wow! :-) |
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| From the gondola. It was VERY foggy and kind of chilly at the top. (And this is August!) | Instead of riding the gondola down, we hiked the trail down. I should have taken a picture of the trail, but I was focusing on not falling down. (Pretty steep, but neither of us fell - yay!) There were a couple of Big Foot signs - kind of entertaining -this is one - |
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The trail down took us about an hour and a half. Not sure how long it was, but we both agreed it was challenging, fun and totally worth it. (Plus my first experience using a hiking stick.) At the bottom, on the trail out, there were several wood carving 'statues'. This one is called the Pooped Logger. |
Finally 'saw' bigfoot. This carving kind of creeped me out. |
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There was a tree section right near the exit. The markers on the tree are :1096 Crusades (near the center) |
On the way back to Ashland, we drove up the Oregon coast on 101.  We went to Brookings and there was a Pirate Festival. Which was the PERFECT opportunity to finally try a deep fried Twinkie / Oreo and Snickers (the sampler). We both agreed that we'd just prefer the non-deep fried versions. |
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| In Ashland, we were walking around (cute town) looking for a place to have dinner and saw this - very cute bears dressed up to reflect each of the plays. They are auctioned off for charity. So cute! | This was where we saw The Winter's Tale as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival |
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| You walk through the outer door into this lovely courtyard. | You cannot take pictures from your seats, but you can take pictures from the courtyard. What you cannot see, is that there is no roof over the performance area. I asked an usher about that, and she said that she saw a show during rain earlier. They had ponchos and the cast performed the entire play. Apparently - the Show must go on! |
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