Emigrant Lake, Ashland (8)

Ashland still feels like our second home, in addition to being a Disneyland for this former thespian. In a three night stay, we saw four shows at the Shakespeare Festival and got to hang out with our son and grab drinks with special Cabaret friends. All activities were wonderful, as was the chocolate caramel apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I’ve been watching calories, but this splurge was worth it. Plus, it’s an apple, so technically it’s good for me.

For our first evening performance, we saw “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the Bowmer. Richard thinks he’s never seen this before, which seems weird. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the play, plus having been in a high school production of it, but I guess he didn’t ever join me to see it before. It was of course a very good production, with especially stand out performances in the roles of Puck, Hermia, and Titania/Hippolyta.

Before curtain time, we cruised the gift shop and I texted our daughter to see if she wanted anything, like a fancy leather bound papyrus journal, or perhaps a tiara. She said she was good on tiaras, but told me to keep a lookout for D&D dice. Lol, I said, because how likely is it that I would find dice? Imagine my surprise when we walked into FunAgain Games where they had more dice than I have ever seen in my life. They hold game nights all week for D&D, board games, Magic, and people can also arrange meet ups through their Discord group. They have puzzle tables and a whole wall devoted to puzzles. I sent pictures and picked up rainbow dice, a nerdy sticker, and a pair of tiny swords for her. For “dual wielding.” Obviously.

The next day we got to see our son and his new puppies! He works in special education at the local elementary schools. His school year is just wrapping up this week so he’s exhausted, but we got to grab him and take him to dinner. We met up with longtime friends at Martino’s and shared calzone and catch up stories. Man it was great to see these faces. Missed a picture with Darcy, so I look forward to the next opportunity when we come through again.

Shows that day included “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World” in the Thomas Theatre, and an evening performance of “Come From Away.” The former is a powerful new play that deals with terminal cancer and how a family processes it all. I was very moved by it and impressed with the performances. The latter is a musical about the time after 9/11 when all planes in US airspace were grounded and the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland found itself hosting thousands of stranded passengers. I’m not usually a musical fan, but this one was a fascinating depiction of a unique moment in time. The stories portrayed are all based on true events and I never thought about what an incredible undertaking that was on the part of these unexpected host cities. It is nice to be reminded of human decency and goodwill these days.

On our last day in town, Richard rode the Green Way bike trail to Medford, with a stop at Puck’s Doughnuts. I met him with the car and we got in a shopping trip at Trader Joe’s. Then it was back to Dory to put everything away and later, we made one quick stop at our son’s to say goodbye. On our way back into town, we swung by the location of what used to be our house, but it has been completely erased. I’m not surprised really, nor sad exactly. We, or rather my mom, bought that house when it was in quite a disgusting, dog pee infused, state. But we worked hard to fix it up the best we could. Richard removed a load bearing wall and we stripped old paint and refinished built in wood features. When we later sold it, the adjacent university was anxious to make an offer. I figured they would someday bulldoze it to make way for student housing. I go look at it when we come to town and it was looking pretty decrepit. It makes a very final statement to just be totally gone, but I can’t say I’m wistful. I do love our house now, and you can’t beat having a Dory campground in the back yard. But little things, like realizing those irises I planted are gone, does feel kinda sad.

We shook off the nostalgia with a delicious dinner of street tacos at Taqueria Picaro. And lastly, we rounded out our theatre fest with “A Raisin in the Sun” in the Bowmer. This was a classic Festival production, packing an emotional gut punch through outstanding writing and world class performances. I’ve never seen this one before and I recommend it highly. For most of the performances, the house has been filled with high school groups, which is wonderful to see. The energy is super high and you can feel the excitement as a new generation is introduced to high quality theatre. I tip my hat to the chaperone teachers giving them the run down on theatre etiquette and behavior expectations. I saw one separate students before curtain time because she didn’t trust they wouldn’t whisper to each other during the performance, and I loved that. Well done teacher chaperone!

One rain cloud to an otherwise sunny stay is that I am on a self imposed knitting/crocheting break. I clearly overdid it on the enthusiastic start to all of this, and my hands got really sore. I was thinking that by switching to different techniques, it would get better, but The Internet has convinced me that I really need to stop and rest for a bit to let all those tiny unused muscles and tendons adjust. I know I strained them after a marathon day where I spent many hours knitting nonstop, and even if they haven’t gotten worse, they have also not gotten any better. I reluctantly accept it’s better to stop for a week than cause permanent damage, but I’ll be honest, it hasn’t been easy. I’m in a “can’t stop, won’t stop” mode, but my body assertively disputed with, “can, will.” After a four day hiatus, I can tell my hands are healing, so that is encouraging. In the meantime, I got to hang out at The Websters (a close knit community), a yarn store in downtown Ashland where people gather once a week for community knitting. That got me excited to join the Lafayette knitting community at our own yarn store, Busy Stix. I picked up a pair of compression gloves at Websters and instead of reading articles or watching YouTube videos on techniques, I am now learning about the importance of posture and taking breaks. I didn’t think of this as a particularly physically challenging hobby, but I guess if you do anything repetitively for hours and hours, you need to treat it with respect. At least Ashland is a great place to pause because there is so much to do.

It’s been a lovely stay, as usual. We have reservations and tickets for a stop over in September. We had perfect weather and could not have asked for a better time. On we go, tracking northward!

Total miles from Fowler’s: 91.7, 2 hours 24 min, 17.5 mpg. Site 4, full hookups. Excellent cell. Great view. Always a nice place to stay.