How Lovely Southern Oregon Is

Last weekend, in among watching the World Cup final and the third-place playoff, I was with my dad for a road trip up through southern Oregon and the northern coast of California. He'd been to Crater Lake before, and wanted to take me along, so we dutifully packed up the car with sunscreen, bug spray and water bottles, and set out.

Mount Shasta, driving up on the first day 

We slept in a different town each night, and took in a variety of places on the way. The itinerary, roughly, was Ashland, Medford, Crater Lake, Roseburg and the Oregon Caves, all in Oregon; then Crescent City, California; back to Oregon for a quick wander around the one redwood grove growing outside of California; then back down through the Avenue of the Giants to Willits; and finally stops in Healdsburg and San Francisco.

I'm proud to report that the car got put through its paces, covering about a thousand miles on the trip, but held up great. This is notable because it's 21 years old, and the family keeps predicting that it's on its last legs, but it keeps managing these nice long trips. My secret is taking it in for scheduled maintenance pretty religiously, and opting for short commutes - since the middle of 2016, its most intense action (apart from these periodic trips with my dad) has been a single drive per week up to SF's financial district. Other than that I used it to drive to the gym or to lunch most days.

But back to what we saw. In terms of towns we saw, the highlight for me was Ashland. I'd been hearing about the place for ages, because of the Shakespeare Festival, but never got the chance to pass through until now. To be honest, after a day's driving in epic heat, it was like stumbling into an oasis, albeit a very hot oasis. We strolled through the center of town for a bit, checked out Lithia Park with its bandstand (which was preparing for a show that evening), and stopped for dinner at a sushi place near the park.

It all seemed extraordinarily genteel, well-kept and pleasantly laid out, and I'll be honest, if life were to send me to Ashland for an extended period I think I'd be pretty pleased. Even the 100+ degree heat was kind of welcome, because my head was getting scrambled by all the AC on the drive up. More than anything, though, it was the sight of the bandstand filling up for the evening, with locals of all ages staking out spots on the grass to listen to music - it felt a million miles away from anything here in the Bay Area.

Crater Lake was probably the natural high point. We got there the following day, after staying the night in Medford. My dad and I went for a look at the East Rim of the crater, and then went for a walk to Mt. Garfield, one of the highest peaks there, and got some amazing views not only of the lake itself, but also the hilly countryside behind it - it was easy to see where Ansel Adams got his inspiration from. And the neatest part was that even though it was about 95 degrees there that day, there were still a few lumps of snow lying around.

Crater Lake from the Watchman Overlook

The plan the next day was to head to Coos Bay and check out the Oregon Coast, but a navigational failure meant that we drove for a couple of hours south before realizing we'd have had to double back about halfway to Roseburg to get there. So instead we drove to the Oregon Caves, another national park, and got the hour-long tour of some amazing cave systems. Beyond the geological wonder of the place, it was interesting seeing the effect humans have had on the cave system, with a number of trails and chambers hacked out at different times by Victorian and New Deal-era administrators. It's a long drive up a number of winding country roads, but worth a visit for all that.

That evening we got to Crescent Bay, and the weather turned cool for the rest of the trip, because Crescent City is right on the Pacific and so bedeviled by fog most of the time. It was under this kind of weather that we drove up again into Oregon the next morning to check out the Oregon Redwood Trail.

That's a state park, and not a very well-known one, judging from the effort it took to get there. We got lost a couple of times and then, when we found the way, drove for about four miles up an unpaved road to get to it. Without taking too much away from it, you don't go to see huge trees, although there were a few impressive specimens there. But the spot is notable for being home to the northernmost trees of a network that stretches all the way down to Monterey, California. It was early in the morning, at least as far as day trippers are concerned, so we had the place mostly to ourselves for our quick amble through the groves.

Near Crater Lake

The other highlight for that day was the Avenue of the Giants. This was a special bit for me, because it's probably the first time I've introduced an outdoorsy spot to my dad, rather than him showing one to me. But I'd been there before for a half-marathon, so I knew to look out for it, and was pleased to see he was really impressed by it.

One thing to note about the trip is that the hotels got worse and worse each night. We didn't spend a lot of time looking for cute inns or B&Bs to stay in, so we opted for the national chains and some of them were pretty basic. The best was the Quality Inn in Medford on the first night, and the worst was the Redwood Inn in Willits, which is about a hundred miles south of the Avenue of the Giants. They ended up being fine for our needs, particularly as related to watching World Cup games, but we agreed that we could probably have just stayed in Quality Inns in each place. Or driven back down to Medford for a second night after Crater Lake.

On a more positive note we managed to find a local brewery each night (except in Willits), and passed the evenings in an even more convivial fashion. The highlight was probably Seaquake Brewing in Crescent City, which looked like the hoppingest place in town on the Saturday night that we were there.

This leads into the other aspect of Crescent City, and a number of other places we passed through on the trip. Apart from Ashland, most of these towns were pretty down-at-heel, reflecting the loss of jobs and industry in the region. Places along the Avenue of the Giants are still sustained by logging, but Crescent City in particular seemed to hold a lot more ramshackle houses and people who looked pretty down on their luck. Adding to the miasma were the ever-present gun shops (including an army surplus in Medford offering full SWAT gear for the budding white supremacist) and the signs advocating for the "state of Jefferson", which the northern counties of California want to secede into.

On the positive side, people were super friendly, there and north of the state line. One lady in the Crescent City Safeway struck up a conversation with me and my dad while we waited in the checkout line, which seems unlikely to happen in Palo Alto.

One of the things that always strikes me about California is how diverse the landscapes are. Since moving back I've been all over the state, including Yosemite, Mono Lake and other outdoor spots, and I just can't get enough of it. I also can't recommend it highly enough.