The summer is almost over and I can honestly say it’s the best summer I’ve had in a while. Teaching is totally worth it for the uncommon bliss of unstructured time and ultimate freedom. I did not need to check my e-mail, there was nothing I needed to do and no one I needed to contact. It was so liberating that I am announcing my retirement from a 12 month working life FOREVER. Because of this, there were also some awesome vacations that I’d like to summarize. Most recently, my BFF and I went to Ashland, OR to partake in the “best local vacation” ever: the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Attending this festival brought us through northern, central California (NorCenCal), and returning took us through NorCal proper (Humboldt County). The vacation served dual purposes: to nightly go to plays, and to check out possible future places of residence.
The Shakespeare Festival really made me a believer in the genius of Shakespeare. I mean, it’s kind of a cliché to say he was a genius, but being doused in his wit and wisdom daily really drives home that point. Every single story line in modern movies can be attributed to him (this is a fact that I want to believe, though I do not have the breadth of knowledge to confirm). We saw an awesomely modern disco themed Midsummer Night’s dream where the faeries wore tutus, and much of the prose was sung (or rapped). There was also a VW bus rolled onto the stage at various intervals. We also saw a riveting portrayal of Othello that literally had me on the edge of my seat for over 3 hours, taken in by the jealousy and madness to which I could “kind of” relate. Then there was Our Town, which was OK, but really only served as a lowly end member to put Shakespeare’s awesomeness in perspective. It was not even 2 hours, and I was slightly bored.
The festival goers tended to be old people and teenagers. There was a dearth of young, urbane couples, which seems strange to me, given how awesome it was. I think this could all change with the right Facebook account coupled with a spread in Readymade. Ashland was really cute, with lots of things that white people like: for example, Co-ops, glass water bottles, and the out-of-doors. We got awesome cable TV in our hotel, which was refreshing in its confirmation that we are not missing anything that can’t be rented on DVD or watched over the internet. There was a local creamery that made delectable “artisan cheeses”. We purchased three bags of flavored cheese curds, which were consumed in record time and formed the basis of our caloric consumption for about 24 hours.
From Ashland, we made our way through the redwoods to Arcata, the hippie heart of NorCal and the grandfather of the stoner college aesthetic. The driving was beautiful and we stopped at the “trees of mystery”. We were lured in by pictures of a “sky rail”, which would carry our lazy asses to the treetops in a metal box. We eagerly paid, only to find out that they wanted us to actually WALK through the woods before getting on this amazing contraption. We kind of just wanted to be teleported and done with it as we’d been driving all day. There was also an enormous Paul Bunyan statue who spoke to the people sitting on him and taking pictures. I saw a young boy hop upon his boot only to hear PB say, “So, you want to sit on my boot, eh?”. He seemed to be a very gregarious metal statue.
Arcata was small and kind of icky. I expected to like it much more than I actually did. The food prices seemed insanely expensive (more so than Palo Alto, which was shocking), and it didn’t seem to have the kind of culture one normally associates with a college town. Eureka, however, got my stamp of approval when I discovered TWO natural grocery stores.
The drive from Arcata back to the bay area was kind of awesome because we discovered a wonderful town called Willits, where I ate delicious hippie nachos (with cauliflower!) and saw a gas station-turned grocery store. It was the place that Seabiscuit called home when he was an old horse, and the current home of Wavy Gravy (we know this because we overheard the store clerks in the arts and crafts store talking about it)—and that’s merely the tip of the iceberg of reasons to love it. There were other little hippie enclaves that seemed weird and rad along the 101, but we stopped at Willits solely because of the handwritten sign advertising “delicious nachos”. I guess they know how to get a certain kind of traveler…the hungry ones!
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