Tour guides for a long weekend

Kelcy arrived from Alaska Thur pm, pounds of his self-caught halibut wrapped up in his sweaters.  At the Anchorage airport, they'll refrigerate your catch while you lay over, say, for 24 hours to get the *next* flight to Portland, OR.  Kelcy had slept in an Anchorage airport chair overnight since he was lucky enough to arrive a day early. He was wearing his Carhartt jacket, big rubber boots and a beard the size of Jeremiah Johnson.  I was standing in line with the other chauffeurs who were holding up family names.  My sign said "CHEESE"  so I knew Kelcy would find me. He did.


We had a whirlwind 4.5 day weekend tour of the area. He was home alone Friday to sleep in late, shower, eat the fresh fruit and veggies we left him, while Judd and I had to work.  But Friday night we went to the DANCIN winery, just 1.5 miles from our house.  It has the prettiest logo in all the So Oregon magazines; it is described as the 2017 Oregon winery of the year AND we went the evening of live jazz. A good time was had by all.

Saturday we made Kelcy's day when we got his cell phone reset at Verizon. He has been textless for 6 months, resorting to Facebook messenger only.  When the dude at Verizon got him synched up, it took a while to download all the messages he's missed.  He was incommunicado for a while in the back seat but we got his attention again at the BATTLE OF THE BONES in Central Point.   THAT's a thing.  We went the day of the Brewfest and pulled pork tasting. They carded us, gave us wrist bands and glasses and 6 tickets to go around trying different beers or wines from the area.  AND THEN, we had pre-purchased tickets for the battle:  15 kiosks of pulled pork to taste with varying number of BBQ sauces, and then we got to vote on the favorite!  Very well organized; good clean family fun! WoW!  Kelcy and I voted the place with the best maple bourbon sauce; Judd voted for the place NEXT to the ultimate winners: Smoke and Mirrors. We were too full to eat dinner that night, but after a little down time, we rallied to walk up to the Britt Festival after dark and steal some pics/sounds of the GooGoo Dolls.

Movies we Netflixed all weekend:

Guardians of the Galaxy II

Dr. Strange

Sideways

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men tell no Tales

Battle of the Bones in Central Point:  15 booths of pulled pork to sample with varying degrees of BBQ sauces, and only one ticket to vote for your favorite.   

Kelcy steals a special seat at GooGoo Dolls

Light show at GooGoo DOlls

Shakespeare Festival, Ashland to see amazing live performance of Shakespeare in Love

 Spontaneous wine tasting at Ledger David (on our way home from a hike) Unfortunately, Kelcy really like one of the classier reds  (he is getting a discriminating palate-- dang!)




Back to our kitchen for happy hour with 4 kinds of cheese from the locally famous Rogue Creamery..... and salami. They sell salami too. The taste-testing almost sated us too much for lunch.

Sunday we walked downtown to the Jacksonville Sunday open market.  It's like a mini Common Ground Fair in Jacksonville every Sunday that you can walk to from home.  Of all the arts, crafts, kids' tables, fresh produce, homemade jellies and salsas, food tables, what do you think the Thompson men brought home??   Steak.  Yup.  When's the last time you went to a street fair/craft show and brought home steak? And we had to start timing meals so we could fit in the halibut feast Kelcy brought from Alaska. But we fit it all in.