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Ashland has had some fantastic skies the past few days. I’m hoping these kind of skies and clouds follow me to Yosemite where I will be spending much of my spring break next week.
It may not look it from this panorama, but I nearly froze to death taking these eight photos (which were photomerged into one in CS6 later). These clouds were moving through quickly, the wind was howling, and the temperature was probably below freezing with the wind chill factor. I didn’t stick around for long to enjoy the view.
Today’s photo is from the same location as yesterday’s pic. At 200mm and with a bit of a crop you can see that the details of the valley below are just as gorgeous as the wide-angle view.
I have marked the location of this scene with an X on the map below.
Just to the north of this location is Rooster Rock State Park which is supposedly a nude beach. It wasn’t part of our tour. 😉
I took today’s photo back in mid-June. Alas, things are browner now. The location I took this picture from was the same as this prior blog entry.
The Ashland Springs Hotel is in the distance on the right. Empty box cars can be seen on the train tracks that cut through town (even though trains coming through are extremely rare these days).
It has been years since I’ve seen a train use these tracks in town. Yet somehow it felt a bit unsafe to squat down on them for this photo.
As I walked out of the Ashland Recycling Center on Water Street the other day I had the above view. I like the empty box car over the mini tunnel. These same tracks eventually turn into this scene.
The Ashland Recycling Center is right next to a skateboard/bike park. I’m guessing that is where the biker in the tunnel is about to go.
Across the street from Taylor’s Refresher lie part of the tracks for the Napa Wine Train. The wine train takes customers from downtown Napa to St. Helena and back. While on board patrons are treated to a fine meal and wine while enjoying the view of the vineyards.
We road the wine train for Thanksgiving dinner several years ago.
Once upon a time I was a tour guide in Napa so I’ve been on the route from Napa to St. Helena countless times. The beauty of the place never gets old or boring though.
When I was a kid growing up I could hear the train out my bedroom window every evening and morning. I loved the sound of the distant train. When we moved to Ashland in 2000 I was happy to hear the sound of the train in the distance once again. However, we soon upgraded our windows to the double-pane variety which meant no more train sounds except in the summer when we left our windows open. Now we don’t even get that as the trains have stopped rolling through town for the past few years. I don’t know why but it has been a long time since a train came through Ashland.
As I was riding my bike over the overpass in town I saw a guy walking on the train tracks playing (or pretending to anyway) an electric flying V guitar. I quickly stopped and pulled out my camera. However, I hadn’t reloaded my SD card and by the time I did so he was already under me. So I was left with the above view of empty tracks instead. No train, no guitarist. No one is even on the bike path that runs along the tracks on the left side of this photograph.
The way my camera is pointing leads to Medford, Oregon (followed by Eugene, Portland, Seattle, etc.). The way the guitarist was walking is California, which if he followed the tracks he would have ended up in about 15 miles later.