The Battle of Shrewsbury

Learned a few lessons camping last night. One, be careful with the slope of the ground under the tent. There were a few times during the night that we had to reset our arrangement because the sleeping pads had slid down to the foot of the tent. Two, our tent provides no protection from fog. Got a little moist during the night.

Nevertheless! We awoke early on Day 8 to explore Redwood National Park and make it to Ashland, Oregon for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We decided to hike the Tall Trees Grove in the morning which is only accessible by permit (it's free, but they only give out a limited number each day). So we hit the Visitor Center promptly at 9am to get ours and then drove down the six mile gravel road to the trailhead.

We arrived at the same time as another car and therefore found ourselves hiking alongside another visitor by the name of Harry. Which was incredibly neat because Harry was, of all things, a professor of botany at the University of South Carolina. He pointed out dozens of things to us from the names of plants to how to calculate the heights of trees to evidence for reading the fire history in the forest. It was like a private ranger walk, except that he had never been in the tall trees grove either and therefore shared our wonderment.

And the grove was wonderful. The redwoods are slightly taller than the sequoias, though feel less mighty because of their narrower trunks (which are still massive) and the greater density in the forest. What was remarkable was how lush the forest floor was. This wasn't the dry, alpine Sierras - the summer fog off the Pacific keeps the ground moist year-round and allows for ferns and all other sorts of things to grow. No wildlife sightings though, although Cristy was rightfully proud of her banana slug shot.

After saying goodbye to Harry, we left the park to the north and left the Golden State. We had travelled nearly 800 miles from San Diego to Oregon and had witnessed the remarkable diversity of our state. But it was time to move on and time to start exploring the rest of this country.

After winding through the mountains, we finally reached Ashland around 5pm. We grabbed a room at the Holiday Inn Express and went towards downtown. Talk about charming -- Ashland is awesome. Small but sophisticated, it's almost like a smaller and more respectable version of Berkeley. We grabbed a couple slices of pizza at Martolli's (which was great) and then went to Mix for ice cream (where I ordered 'brown butter cookie dough', which was also great).

And then Cristy tried to poison me by encouraging a drink of Ashland 'lithia' water. Apparently, in a vintage kooky turn-of-the-century idea, Ashland tried to create mineral water tourism from the local spring. Only problem is that one of the minerals in the water is sulphur and it tastes ghastly. There's a fountain in the downtown square to satisfy the curious.

And then, best of all, we walked up the hill to the Elizabthian Stage to see a performance of Henry IV (Part I) under the stars. Spectacular in every way - actors, setting, story. There was an actor from Seinfeld (the 'siddler') and from Frasier (the 'corkmaster') and they didn't even have significant parts. The main characters - Hal, Fallstaff, Hotspur -- were postively brilliant. Makes me want to see Henry V again now that I have all of this context and history on the character.

Phenominal day. Tomorrow, we head to Crater Lake and then start working our way up to Seattle.