Day 131: getting out of Ashland. Kind of. :)

Monday 8/27/12
Miles 0
Elevation 4,431'

After mailing out all our stuff at the post office, we took the bus to the downtown area to go to the outfitters and get some ice cream.

The Ashland outdoor shop was really cool. I got some buckles and webbing to make a compression sack. Kyle got a new shirt. It's funny, he got the same shirt I have. I told him I'm going to sharpie a Team K Squared logo on our shirts. Haha!

There's an ice cream store in town that makes homemade ice cream. Oh my gosh it was so good!!! We found a ton of other hikers in town. I finally gotto meet Neon! So, I've been hearing about this guy for the last 300 miles, and everyone said that I need to meet him. Lol. I think what tipped the scale was when one of the other hikers described his first encounter with Neon as, "I thought at first this guy was transgender.". Lol! That's so cool!! Apparently Neon has various outfits he wears, in really loud colors, including bright purple zebra stripe leggings. Anyhow, I finally got to meet Neon today!! He is pretty awesome. He's hiking with his wife. He also used to be some kind of scientist for NASA. Wow, the fascinating people you meet on trail. :)

Anyhow, one of the locals was telling me that the Ashland Hash House Harriers was doing a hash tomorrow night. Doh!! Dang I really wanted to do a hash. Plus, Scallywag and Scrub Rat was saying one of the breakfast places in town gives free breakfast to thru-hikers. Baaaaahh! Why do people tell us these things right before we are about to leave?!? See, it's things like this that make it incredibly difficult to leave towns. So we contemplated staying another night.

In the end we decided to leave. Ah well, no free breakfast and no running with the Ashland HHH. Meh, the way I see it, everywhere we go, there will always be good food *somewhere*. And maybe I can do a run with the Bend chapter of hash house harriers.

By the time we got back to the trail it was almost dark, so we just camped almost next to the road. Ah well, 0 miles done but at least we got out of town! Whew! Lol. That's really hard to do sometimes :) Ashland is a cool town. I'm just really bummed I didn't get to see any plays. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is going on (Feb thru Nov) and they have shows every night except Monday's. Walking Stick saw As You Like It. He said it was really good. The shows are quite expensive though. :(. Ah well, can't win em all. It's hiking time! :)