lil' bit: Oregon Caves

Last weekend I went away to the mysterious state of Oregon. My friends and I traveled a great distance in our magical locomotive machine (a VW jetta) and arrived in the city of Ashland. Here we were witness to amazing talent of many performers as they entertained us with their rendition of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and a uproarious interpretation of the Marx brother's genius in a play titled "Animal Crackers." This was my second year at the plays and I hope to experience many more plays in years to come as the experience is well worth the journey. Unfortunately I did not take the opportunity to document my adventure in Ashland via photograph, but I do have a picture from last year that I will exhibit so that you may bear witness to the wonderful architecture of one of the theaters in which the play "As You Like It" was performed.

As you can see it is an outdoor or open air theater which made the experience so very lovely. They used the whole stage and set during the performance. There was a monstrous, many cog, clockwork suspended above the second balcony which was used to show the progression of time during the play and I would have loved to take some pictures of this but regrettably photography was forbidden during the play.

On the second day of our stay in this wonderful place we again boarded our magical locomotive machine and took a journey into the hills that surrounded this theatrical city. Our purpose was to explore the caves that had been discovered many years ago in these hills. The journey took us through a few small villages that were cute in size and stature as well as interesting in presentation, as they were filled with small shops and dinners and surrounded by fields of livestock.

The caves themselves are know as the "Oregon Caves," and were worth the two hours spent in the confides of our machine ( I made great progress on a scarf I'm knitting). When we arrived at our destination we had a hour long wait before our tour and used this time to explore the lodge and gift shops, both of which were rustic and historic in nature. I was able to take some photos of this little adventure which I will share with you below. On a whole the vacation/adventure was very enjoyable, though I do sometimes wonder if my friends are actually trolls in disguised as they sometimes bear the temperament of this ill humored creatures. That is the price you pay when you chose to travel in the company of others and is usually counterbalanced by the joy of having someone to share in the experience.

Pictures of the caves and area about:

Back in the early days of exploring these caves people used to sign this formation, using it as a sort of guest book. Some of the signatures were very old, this one is dated Aug 28th, 1892! At one point the parks dept. tried to clean them off but something in the pencil or ink that was used left a permanent stain on the rock. I, personally am glad. Even though in signing the rock the essentially killed it, stopping it from growing any larger, I like to think that the people didn't know what they were doing and now it has become part of the caves history.

I thought this formation looked like fangs!

You had to climb 45 steps that were almost completely vertical to get to this chamber, which they called Paradise Lost. The formations in this area reminded me of a school of jelly fish.

I took this picture because when I looked up and saw it in the dim light I thought it was a bat, unfortunately it looks to be a leftover part of a timber that was used to support the tunnel we were in. No bats on the entire exploration, I was very disappointed!

This deer was waiting for us as we exited the caves. At first everyone thought he was fake, then he started to move about and pose while everyone took pictures of him. He could have charged 10cents a picture and made a killing!