A taste of wine (if not wine country)

The next major stop on our road trip is Portland, OR. We're there now, having picked up Jackie (blog post forthcoming). But first, Amanda and I had to find a place to stay last Friday night, since the journey from Yosemite to Portland is a cool 15 hours or so.

Anticipating that we'd want something relaxing to wind down from the Half Dome hike, we contacted a winery in Mt. Shasta, CA. They told us that on the day we roll through town, they'd actually be doing tastings at a wine festival in Medford, OR, just over the border. Perfect! we thought: We can take in the best of Oregon wine country in a scenic, relaxing setting, before getting up and finishing the drive to Portland.

Um, yeah.

What we had pictured would be a long wooden banquet table in the middle of a scenic valley with a view of mountains in the distance, maybe a fire pit and a nice string quartet, turned out to be a parking lot in suburban Medford with a giant event tent and a female rock band playing the best of Melissa Ethridge and the Dixie Chicks (the lead singer even had a full on mullet with about three inches in vertical height).

The crowd was...interesting...and in between bites of chicken wings and beef jerky (because those pair perfectly with a nice pinot, of course) we had to explain over and over how two women from D.C. and Chicago ended up at this Harry & David parking lot in Medford.

All together the wine was pretty good and it was a genuinely good break from the road, but not exactly the taste of Oregon wine country that we'd been seeking. On to Portland!

The Harry & David parking lot, of course: