Hanging out in Jefferson State

What would be the 51st American state (I guess Australia will have to challenge for 52nd spot) is a large chunk of Northern California and southern Oregon. In the 1940's a group of folk fed up with bad roads and falling down bridges declared they were seceding and Jefferson State was almost born. Pearl Harbour was bombed a short time later and the whole thing lost momentum - the war was in full swing and Oregon and California decided to repair the roads and bridges of their outlying counties so they could get in to dig up the resources and cut down the trees. Jefferson State was never fully realised, though it lives on as a state of mind, perhaps best displayed in a lovely little town called Ashland in southern Oregon.

I stayed with Peter and Emily who were simply fantastic in housing me, feeding me and showing me around Ashland which is about as perfect as any town I'd care to live in. The town feels like a commune that just grew up a little - they have an organic co-op which is the best place you're ever likely to buy groceries, a Shakespeare festival that runs for most of the summer over 3 different theatre's (we saw Romeo and Juliet on the Elizabethan Stage), it has easy access to flying and skiing, fruit trees everywhere, deer roam the streets and they have an outrageously fun 4th of July parade:



After the parade we headed south and camped in the Shasta valley with some more pilots who travelled up from San Francisco. I had seen Shasta off in the distance while flying at Woodrat and further off in the distance from Lakeview and I couldn't resist Peter's offer of getting up close to this tall, alluring northern californian lady. We flew from Whaleback, a smaller volcanic cinder cone about 8km from Mt Shasta, launching at 6pm Peter quickly climbed out. I took a while to catch up to him but eventually we were able to get just above 10,000ft and glided out into the valley. I'll let the pictures below do the talking - some of these were taken on the second day when we got to almost 13,000ft, again very late in the day.



It was an amazing place to fly with a great group of people. That perfect balance.

Next is some time in San Francisco and Los Angeles to see some friends new and old and then head back north for the competition in Canada.

Some pictures of the Rat Race and Lakeview and all the above pics can be seen at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/BennKovco

More soon.