Ok, we’re not actually in Seattle yet – it’s just our stop over to Oregon’s answer to Stratford upon Avon – Ashland! (no UFOs here, unlike the home of Shakespeare…) We woke up at our usual time (well I did anyways, Jerry woke up earlier because of a loud noise in her ear during the night…) gathered up the belongings and headed to breakfast. Yes, that all important meal of the day – today at Holder’s Country Inn in Cupertino. Actually we were waisting time, because at 10 AM Jerry was going to get her iPhone (perks of working at Apple…) so we parked in one of the Apple lots so she could run in.

Now, with her new toy in hand, we set off on our long drive – listening to the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry, as he reads to us the latest Harry Potter story. I drove the first leg of this journey, with a brief stop for food and relief somewhere along the way, and Jerry drove the second. The Prius is a great car for this sort of journey, as we filled up in Cupertino and still have gas at the end of the drive in Ashland.

Once in Ashland, we checked in to our motel – one of the old motor lodge type places called the Manor Motel – but were disappointed to find that not only did it not have the kitchenette that was reserved, but had two full sized beds instead of one queen. But we lived with it, as it was only less than a mile from the center of action – which we walked to, despite it being quite toasty out.

We walked along Main Street, looking in some of the shop(pe)s – including the festival store (hats, books, and Shakespearean what-nots) but the hunger hit us, and with the heat it made us a bit indecisive. We ultimately made it back to a restaurant that we passed early on called Larks Home Kitchen Cuisine. While we were hungry, we really liked two of the appetizers (the dungeness crab & five cheese fondue with grilled rosemary bread, and the farm plate with taylor’s chicken-apple sausage, local cheeses, market fruit & baguette) and decided to go with those – and you know what, they were FANTASTIC!!!

After dinner we walked over to the theatres and sat on the lawn for the free Green Show (no, not the Red Green show…) This was basically 45-minutes of music (english folk) and dance (modern type, with spandex costumes.) Not really my cup of tea, to be honest, but it was free… From there we went to grab an ice cream cone from Zoey’s Cafe and All Natural Ice Cream – just across the street from where we had dinner. They piled three scoops of our choice of ice cream, which practically lasted me the walk back to our home base.

Once back to our room, I took a shower to get the sweat and sticky off of me while Jerry futzed on her computer. Once out, I helped her with activating her new iPhone. Part of setting it up, is putting your old SIM card into it. This requires having a paper clip (or like) item – which we did not have. At first I whittled a bit of plastic, and that worked once… But there were other issues, but that’s with the phone’s account holder (Apple, inc) and AT&T (formerly Cingular…)

Tomorrow: The Road to Seattle…