Off to Ashland through rural California

En route to Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival,  Tuesday, June 30

This will be our second visit to Ashland for a long weekend of plays.  We’re to see seven plays in four days while we are in Oregon.  Surprisingly we’ve found it isn’t theater overload. We enjoy the plays and our hosts, Jane and Peter from the Bay Area, as well as their other friends here for the shows.  A good few days together.

We are coming off a few very busy days in Washington with company from England and Australia, before that a fortnight in New England.  Then  off to the airport this morning.  We can say it’s been fun, and tiring, but not exhausting.

As we write, John is sitting in an adequate Quality Inn in downtown Chico, California, about ten blocks from Chico State University.  We left Washington early this morning by car for Baltimore Washington Airport, all connections went well, and TSA Pre is just fine for getting through security.  United put planes in the air on time, and we broke the mandatory airline fast with a mediocre sandwich in O’Hare.  We had to do that since United does not really offer meals anymore, in fact they barely offer seats.  The travel was easy, but you have to be prepared to spend six hours sitting in economy seats the size of an old-fashioned phone booth—two hours from BWI to Chicago and another four hours from Chicago to Sacramento.  Fortunately both of us had good books and were able to turn off the annoying video screens United puts about eight inches in front of your nose.

Bitching over.  We arrived in Sacramento and got our bags (it took a long time, sorry, bitching not quite complete), but the airport has an collection of installation art unlike most.  Inside the baggage center are huge stacks of old suitcases and steamer trunks reaching the 10 meter (30 feet) high ceiling, with their old fashioned travel stickers and their painted names.  Outside the airport boasts a collection of glass mobiles/stabiles that resemble either planes, large birds or large insects depending on your viewpoint.   

The rental car turned out to be a full-size Chevy Impala, which is surprisingly comfortable and easy to handle.  We drove north from Sacramento along some freeways, but most of the route to Chico took us through small towns, orchards and farms, with a long-range view of the Sierra Nevada foothills in the distance.  The small towns we passed through gave us another view of California, one John had forgotten and Ben has never really known.

Chico, our current stopover place, is a university town.  It has some very well-preserved old buildings from the 19th century when it was founded,  It was home to found John Bidwell who ran for president in 1892, only to die eight years later in his wife’s arms. 

We ate at a smallish Indian restaurant on a wide boulevard, the Esplanade, that runs through the center of town.  The Priya Restaurant filled us very completely with a selection of vegetarian pakoras as a starter, then offered vegetarian curry dinners which we gobbled up.  Ben had a vegetarian curry of several vegetables while John had a paneer Indian cheese curry in a mild tomato cream sauce.   We had the full surround of lentil dall, raita yoghurt, another vegetable curry (excellent) and several types of bread.  John had an excellent Taj Mahal beer, which is a light-ish lager. The meal was not strikingly spicy, but it was comfortable, the service was excellent and the room air conditioned enough to make up for the 102F (39C) temperature outside.

After we filled ourselves we stopped by the Bidwell mansion to view the house the town’s founders built, then drove through downtown to get a glimpse of Chico State and now are finishing up a full, and quite good, day.

Tomorrow it is off to Lassen National Park and then to Ashland.