Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Ashland vacation day 1 of 4. rode uberx to pick up a getaround car garaged behind stonestown. breakfast at mcd’s: biscuit meal for Patrick, egg mcmuffin meal for me. Patrick drove us to Ashland, Oregon leaving around 10:45 am. we stopped at a rest stop for a bathroom break. we stopped at mt shasta for gas and to reproduce a photo we took in 1999 and to check out the nearby best western plus as a possible place to stay in the future. (Patrick likes it. I think it looks fine.) we stopped for a mid afternoon snack of french fries at mc’ds drive-thru. the trip took us about 7 hours including rest stops. we regularly encountered roadside construction but little traffic. we arrived in ashland around 4:30 pm and checked in to ashland springs hotel. We’re in room 810, a corner room on the 8th of 9 floors with a 180-degree view of the surrounding mountains and the many trees dotting all of Ashland. Hues of green and brown fill the view. Evenings are cool like San Francisco in the Sunset district. Days are sunny, warm, and pleasant like San Francisco in the Mission. We rested a bit and unpacked before walking to dinner at Liquid Assets, a restaurant and wine bar. We each had the featured flight of three Italian wines: a dolcetto, a sangiovese chianti, and a nebbiolo. We shared a beet salad. Patrick’s entree was fried chicken (breast and leg) with orange slices and a black garlic puree. My entree was a short rib conchigle and cheese. For dessert we shared a coconut stout float with vanilla ice cream and gluten-free beignets with bourbon caramel sauce with two coffees with cream. We enjoyed the dinner very much except for the float. The chicken was perfectly juicy with a crispy, dry skin. The conchigle could easily have been overly rich, but it was perfectly balanced in every way. Stopped at a small convenience store for a few bottles of Fiji water. To bed.