Ashland Photo Album
Ashland Photo Album - Page 1
(Widen up your window to fit two pictures across - it looks better)
On our way from Redwood National Park to Ashland, we took a side trip to see Crater Lake, about 60 miles north of Medford, Oregon. Crater Lake is the Deepest Lake in the United States (there's that theme again) and is truly an impressive sight. The lake itself is at 8000 feet and the surrounding mountains are considerably higher than that. For this reason, the park doesn't really open up in earnest until July 1. Up until then, you can only gain access to Crater Lake Village, about 8 miles in from the park entrance.
This first picture was taken while making the drive from the park entrance to Crater Lake Village. This was June 1st, yet you can see that there was still considerable snow on the ground (more than 4 feet).
The 2nd picture above was taken at Crater Lake Village and shows just a small piece of the beauty of the lake. Since the lake is so large, it is really impossible to capture it all in a single picture.
Here's another shot from Crater lake. This one is of Wizard Island, one of two small islands which jut out from the lake. Finally, we arrived in Ashland which, as Brenda noted in her Impressions, is the host of a major Shakespeare theatre festival each year for several months. During the festival, 3 downtown theatres host Shakespeare plays as well as other performances. The festival was going on while we were there, but our timing was a bit off so we didn't get to see anything. We were there from Saturday to Tuesday, but we arrived too late for the Saturday performances and they don't have any performances on Sunday or Monday evenings (those are their days off). Bummer, but we got over it. The town was really cool anyway with lots of bars and restaurants and a really neat park (good for our morning walks).
Here's a shot of downtown Ashland. As I said above, it's a cool little town, especialy if you're staying close enough to downtown to walk to places. We were lucky in this respect since we were staying at the Stratford Inn which was only 5 blocks from downtown.
The 2nd shot above is of Brenda at dinner at one of the many fine restaurants there. This particular place had an outdoor balcony overlooking a tree-lined pedestrian mall below. We pretty much had the place to ourselves that night (Monday night), since it was off season (the season really starts in about mid-June). Also, since there are no Shakespeare plays on Mondays the tourist population is significantly reduced (to almost nil).
