Greetings from Ashland ~  Ashland, is just 15 miles north of the California/Oregon border.  A town of about 22,000 residents, Ashland is home to the world renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Southern Oregon University, Lithia Park (a 93-acre park in the heart of town), the Ashland Independent Film Festival, the awesome Rogue River, over 60 wineries and the list goes on.

Following my post from yesterday in which I expressed my desire to have this blog be a venue for others to share their story, today I am introducing my friend Kent, who lives in southern Arizona.  Kent has a passion for the color, the warmth and the culture of the desert in which he lives.  Here is his story.

In my recent post River Guides and Chefs, I offered one of my reasons for launching this blog, food!  And who doesn’t love food?  There is a whole big world out there for roadies and foodies so if I can share even a small sampling, all the better. My decision to launch this blog and the reasons why actually came about in no particular order.

There are multiple reasons why I launched this blog.  Being one of a gazillion other travel blogs is not on top of the list, but I do have a few good reasons.  While there are indeed a LOT of travel blogs (and various assorted other blogs) out there, I wanted to put just a bit of a different spin on mine and I knew food needed to be a piece of the puzzle. 

If you had told me five years ago that today, October 14, 2012, I would be living in Ashland, Oregon, owning and operating a bed and breakfast inn and launching my 2nd blog, I would have told you, “I don’t think so.”  And yet, here I am doing just that.

May 28, ’11 –  Yeah baby!  We did it!  3,760 miles from our front door in Ashland, OR to our hotel entrance in Washington DC and right on schedule.  We arrived in D.C. to 89 degrees and clear blue skies and our first sighting was that of Georgetown University, on the hill overlooking the Potomac River, and it was a special moment as we have so many fond memories of Dustin’s 4 years at Georgetown.

Remember?  I am a lover of history, especially American history and the settling of the American west, so you’ll understand why today’s (Saturday, May 21) history tour was a HUGELY happy day for me.