I-5 sounds pretty much the same 24-7. Sunday afternoon, middle of the night, Monday morning – jut an amazing, never-ending stream of gas-burning engines\u00a0on wheels. Also, it doesn’t feel like a Monday to me, I’m on vacation! \u00a0It\u00a0was pretty\u00a0cold last night, the heat came on a lot. It’s probably even\u00a0colder in the mountains, where I didn’t go.<\/p>\n

On my way out of the campground I hopped over to the next site to top off my water tank from the handy threaded spigot I noticed there. Immediately I got hassled by some hard-ass dude who seemed think God had willed him that spot, even though I was in it and he wasn’t. I kind of deferred because I thought he might be with the park. Pretty sure he wasn’t, so basically he rolled me by being a bigger asshole, and I am left with some resentment about not standing up for myself. \u00a0No big deal, but part of a well-run life for\u00a0me is not spending time getting bullied by belligerent assholes, so two in less than 24 hours\u00a0is kind of a warning bell for me. Three assholes would make it a trend, and we don’t want that trend.<\/p>\n

Soon I was back to my usual self, only occasionally thinking about last night’s asshole or\u00a0today’s asshole. Because I stopped early last night, I have a very easy drive today. I celebrate by following OR 99 to its terminus\u00a0at the south end of Ashland. I feel I know this part of Oregon a little better now. 99\u00a0takes you right through downtown Medford<\/strong>. I got it in my head that I wanted the experience of real town’s coffee house rather than a swishy, artsy student coffeehouse in Ashland<\/strong>. Probably a mistake. The first place I treid on downtown Medford had the lovely name Limestone Coffee<\/strong>.\u00a0It was so pretentious that I just thanked the lady and moved on.<\/p>\n

The second spot, Downtown Coffee<\/strong> was as funky as you could ask for. You walk in the door and all there is is a landing for a flight of stairs. Business is done and coffee is dispensed by a very tall hippie dude in the alcove\u00a0under the stairs, who seems in constant danger of banging the back of his head on the slanted underneath of the stairwell. Then you take your cup of coffee and walk up a flight of stairs where there are three tables and seven chairs, and that’s it! The coffee was good and cheap and so was the wifi, so it was fine, but … funky. I’ll bet it’s really hot and stuffy in the summer.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Ashland is awfully\u00a0pricey. I got my food for the day at a place called Sammich<\/strong>, where the sandos are > $12 each. The dude told me I could sub potato salad for chips on each, but did NOT tell me he was charging $2 extra each. So a hot sando for here and a cold sando for later was a jaw-dropping $33\u00a0! To the point of the last paragraph, there was also a nice looking coffee place in the same set of buildings … if only I’d known\u00a0I could’ve done one stop shopping and avoided searching for\u00a0parking in downtown Medford and carrying my coffee up a flight of stairs.<\/p>\n

South of Ashland, 99 finally runs out and funnels you back onto\u00a0the interstate, for a high speed drive over Siskiyou Summit<\/strong>\u00a0and down into California<\/strong>\u00a0for the next 70 miles or so. Actually not true – a few miles into California\u00a0I exited\u00a0and followed CA 296<\/strong>. It is a spectacular drive that starts along the Klamath River<\/strong>, then follows\u00a0the Shasta\u00a0River from it’s confluence with the Klamath, then follows\u00a0Yreka Creek to\u00a0Yreka<\/strong>. It\u00a0was quite a pleasant drive, much better than waltzing with semis on the interstate for those miles. Too bad there’s no campgrounds down there.<\/p>\n