Back from Ashland

We took a few days off from the house and Halloween and drove down to Ashland.  Our main reason for going so to see plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.   We travel with friends that go every Memorial Day weekend and they are members so they buy extra tickets for us at their discount and we pay them.  Since they do the ordering we just see whatever they pick out.   We always stay at the Oak Hill Bed and Breakfast with hosts Tom & Pat Howard and as usual had a wonderful time.

We drove down on Friday stopping in Roseburg for late lunch and ate at the McMenamins Station Pub & Brewery.  After getting settled at the B&B we met our friends and had dinner at Martino's right next to the theater.   We saw Measure for Measure that evening.  It was a great interpretation of the play set in modern day with a Latin feel to it.  It has some great surprises with the music and visuals.   We had a night cap back at Martino's and then headed back to our B&B's.

Saturday morning came early and we had another one of Pat's great breakfasts and met a few guests at the table.  We headed out with our friends to Weisingers Winery were we tasted some great wines.   Afterwards we headed back into downtown Ashland to see our matinée play  The Language Archive a funny play about language and relationships.  After the play we wandered around town and stopped at a wine tasting room called Enoteca that is part of Eden Valley Orchards.   We then went to dinner at  Liquid Assets a great little wine bar and restaurant.   After dinner we went to our evening play August: Osage County a comedic tragedy about a very dysfunctional family.  The play is 3.5 hours with 2 intermissions.   Afterwards we just headed back to our B&B and called it a night.

On Sunday we got up and had another wonderful breakfast and then met our friends and headed to Grizzly Peak Winery a new winery in the area we heard about from Weisingers who showed us a new map of wineries in the area.   It was a small operation with several good wines to taste.  The wine maker was on hand and we got to have him sign our bottles along with his picture in a Rogue Valley Wines book we bought.   We headed back to town for our matinée play  To Kill a Mickingbird the play based on the book and movie.  It was a wonderful version and based on everyone who read the book or saw the movie was true to the story.  After the play we headed over to Market of Choice to buy cheese, bread, crackers, olives and stuff to munch on for dinner.  We headed over to a local friends house and ate a spread and drank some of our wine we bought.  The were fostering 2 small kittens so they ended up being the center of attention for the evening.  We headed back to town for our last play  The Imaginary Invalid a hilarious farce about a hypochondriac and his family and doctors.  The play has a 60's musical theme to it.  Someone said it was rocky horror meets Laugh In which does describe it well after you've seen it.   A great play to end on.  I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time.  We went back to Martino's for drinks and stayed with what looked like most of the acting company till late at night when we finally headed back to our B&B.

On Monday we had another great breakfast and our friends all headed home but we booked an extra night so we stayed in town.  We walked through the shops of Ashland for a while buying a few gifts for friends.  We then headed out to Del Rio Vineyards and Winery who's wine we enjoy.  The tasting room experience wasn't the greatest so we bought our few bottles and headed back.   We stopped at the Rogue Creamery in Central Point and also tasted some wine at the  Madrone Mountain Tasting room and tasted Daisy Creek wine which was very nice. We then headed south and stopped at the Eden Valley Orchards tasting room and had some great wine there too.  We visited some friends for a while afterwards and then headed back to Ashland for a much awaited Indian food dinner at Taj Indian Cuisine.  We just headed back to our B&B afterwards and played cribbage until we called it a night (chris won by the way).  

On Tuesday we had the place to ourselves and had breakfast a little later.  I loved the breakfast panini that Pat made.  But all the other breakfasts like french toast, spinich egg rollup with grits, and quiche were all great.  We packed up and headed for home.  We took a detour through Umpqua Valley at Roseburg and stopped at Pyrenees Vineyard and tasted some great wine.  We then went to Abacela and saw their new wine tasting center which is amazing.  Their Temranillo is fantastic also.  Our last stop was at Spangler Vinyards  which had a Akita named Ginger that greeted us.  We met the wine maker Pat and his wife Loree and had a great visit and enjoyed the wine.  We ended our tour back at McMenamins in Roseburg were we ate an early dinner before we hit the road and drove all the way home.

It was a great long weekend spent with friends, wine, and theater.  What a relaxing Memorial day weekend.