I-5 to Medford


The sun woke us up today. I had planned it that way, by leaving the curtains open. River slept the whole night in his crate, and only crawled into bed in the morning when we saw the sun. Then I closed the curtains and slept for another couple of hours.

Two nights ago, in San Francisco, he also seemed to be gravitating toward sleeping in his crate. Typically, he’d always get in bed as soon as the light was out, but in SF, he was already in his crate when I turn out the lights for bed and he stayed in there for maybe half an hour in the darkness before climbing into the bed. He didn’t stay, either. After just a few minutes, he hopped down and got back into his crate. I have to admit, I felt a bit jilted, lol, even though it makes me happy that he’s feeling comfortable and confident enough to sleep in his cage in a strange room.

This morning, before leaving the room in Willows, I put all the foods I had cooked last night into tupperware, arranging them in meals with a couple of vegetables and a protein in each one. Some had cheese, some had pumpkin seeds, some had eggs, some chicken, some beef, etc. I ended up with eight meals. I spent less than $50 at the store yesterday, so that’s pretty good for eight healthy meals. I also like the fun of reaching into the cooler and pulling out a meal without knowing exactly what I'm going to get.


Before we left Willows, I drove us to a park that was around the corner called Central Park. We played vigorously on the grass for a good half an hour, and then relaxed in the shade for another half hour before we actually hit the road.River was nice and exhausted for the drive and slept most of the way.

All of the trip was on I-5 today. I was surprised how long it took just to get to Redding. Because Redding was my original stopping point scheduled for yesterday. I changed it at the last minute to Willows when I learned that this Studio 6 had kitchens. (Which was why I was so upset when they wouldn’t give me pots and pans.) And as we pulled into Willows, I guess partly due to the stressful start to that drive, I felt like I was quite done with the whole driving thing for the day. So, in retrospect, going all the way to Redding would have seemed like a miserably long haul.

The scenery was pretty much flat and similar to what I was calling ‘hay country’ from yesterday’s drive. Until, that is, we got through Redding. Going north, it started getting really good. Mount Shasta and Shastina, which is a nice sight to see; twin volcanoes, frosted with snow. And then, going through the Shasta National Forest was fun.
Lake Shasta (or what's left of it) as seen through the window of my car on the VFW Memorial Bridge
Also, in Oregon all of the trees were very colorful due to the season.
Also, in Oregon all of the trees were very colorful due to the season.

I pulled into Medford around 4:20 pm. I chose to stay again at Medford mainly because of an experience I had had at a local restaurant the last time I was through. This incredible Cajun/Creole/Soul Food place called Marco’s Chili Pepper. It gets great reviews on Yelp, and one of them was mine! I was looking forward to it all day. The first time I had gotten the jambalaya and some bread pudding, and it could be the best I’ve ever had. I wanted to get something different this time to see if Marco would again blow me away.

I got online as soon as we were in the motel room to look up the address, and found, much to my horror that it was closed! A Yelp review dates two weeks ago mentioned that she met the owner, Marco, as he was sweeping up and told her that they were closing.

Well, I guess now there’s no reason for me to ever come back to Medford.
Hopes dashed. Good thing I have my cooler stocked with food.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nude Stretching

Image
I never thought I’d do something like this. But over the years many people have suggested that I make a Nude Stretching Video.  I guess the fact that I’m comfortable with nudity and with my body and that I’m a fitness pro with a passion for helping people made it seem like a no-brainer that I create something like this.  But I’ve been resistant to doing it for a long time; for fear (I guess) of what the more conservative people might think.  Now, finally, I’ve succumbed to the requests and put something together.  You conservative people will just have to look the other way. :) Now, I haven’t made an X-rated video here; I'm just nude and I'm stretching.  It's completely natural. This video blends a smart, educational stretching session with  “Warhol-like” video interludes accentuating an eroticized appreciation of the male form.  My intention was that it could be enjoyed on two levels. The free-style, hand-held segments demonstrate the positi...
Read more

Routines From the Vault

Image
I’ve been teaching Nia for 16 years now. And most of those years, I’ve gotten four new routines from Nia. That comes out to over 60 routines over the years. I’ve also created quite a few of my own routines. And along the way, certain routines have fallen out of favor for one reason or another.  For example, a great routine called Commitments, which uses the music from the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, is one of my first ones. I learned that routine so long ago that I have the music on cassette tape and I watched the routine on VHS. It has been retired “To the Vault” for many years. Ditto for routines called Genesis, Roots and Adagio. Some routines have been taken apart and used to build other routines. For example I took all of the Angelique Kidjo songs from the classic, Agolo, and put together a routine using only songs from her album, Aye (which means "LIFE" and is the name of the routine as well.)  I split up the songs from the repetitive routine Fi...
Read more

Food Purist

Image
I tell people I’m a food purist. And I say I’m gastronomically conservative.  Sometimes these terms are misunderstood. These terms that, as far as I know, I’ve made up; I don’t see them commonly used this way, but I could easily have picked them up subconsciously and adopted them. When something is so universally true, as I think food purism is, you often see the same or similar permutations of the concept showing up in different places. Anyway, being a food purist doesn’t mean that I only eat the foods that offer the best nutrition per calorie, or the foods with the highest antioxidant levels or the most enzymes or the least fat or the lowest glycemic index, etc. etc. That’s all popular science and I don’t get bogged down in it. All of that is changing constantly, anyway: One day eggs are good for you, the next day, you can only have whites, then they’re good for you again, then you find out they’re bad for you. Not that I’m saying anything about eggs right now, but this...
Read more