Day 24, Who'll Stop the Rain?

When the tickets became available on March 1st, I hopped right in the Internet and bought Sunrise Tickets for the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Imagine the photos we could get with the sun rising and perhaps, if we were lucky, there would be a hot air balloon or two. What we got instead was rain and muddy shoes.
We could imagine that the over 40 acres of tulip fields are glorious with the sun and when all the activities and concessions are open. Even in the rain, we managed to spend nearly an hour there. Luckily, the free T-Mobile umbrellas live in the pod. We realized had never been used before this morning.
After the tulip fields, we drove along miles of I5. As we wondered if all the short trees we were seeing were hazelnuts, some nice farmer had signed the field. I do appreciate knowing what I'm looking at. Since I'd also a sign near the tulip farm that mentioned filberts, I wondered what the difference was. The Oregon Hazelnut website says they are one in the same. Early French settlers were first to plant the trees in Oregon. They called them filberts. In Europe, the they are ready for harvest around August 20th, the feast of St. Philbert.

Later, English settlers called them hazelnuts. It wasn't until 1981, the Oregon Filbert Commission decided to officially adopt the common American name and began calling them hazelnuts. I was amazing to find that a hazelnut tree can produce for 100 years! and while Oregon produces 98% of the US's hazelnuts, Turkey is the world's largest grower.

Our drive today was mostly in the rain. One section cautioned there were slippery sections. Denis handled the driving well but we are happy to not be driving tomorrow since another atmospheric river is expected to roll through tomorrow.

There was a break in the weather after we arrived in Ashland. We'll be visiting with  Denis's sister, Ardith, and her husband, Jim, and taking advantage of their kind hospitality. I had a chance to walk around their neighborhood a bit.
The weather should be better on Thursday when we need to go over the Siskiyou pass on our way to California. We're hoping that snow in the mountains will stay off the road.
Location: Ashland, OR 97520, USA

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