Saturday 9 July 2011

Day 98: Talent, OR

A bit of Americana by the side of the road.

There comes a point when you're staying in a foreign country where you decide that enough is enough and that you are going to do things your usual way, no matter what. For example, Antonia and I once went to Pizza Hut in Indore. It was the same impulse that made me decide to walk the three miles into the little town of Talent, Oregon, potter around a bit, have a pint and walk back again... well, I might have a glass of something Californian instead of a pint. 



Some pretty parts of Talent

There are no little footpaths between each field and garden, linking every individual house to the nearest pub, so I had to take the road. Also, my host had given me detailed instructions on which coffee shops are the best, which was a bit disconcerting. Fortunately, the road isn't too busy, the view is amazing and there are lots of Californian poppies and pink and purple vetch growing through the asphalt at the side of the road.


Talent's movie theatre, the prettiest of many churches, the sculpture gallery...

Talent has a population of 7000 people and they must be fairly cultured because they have: a movie theatre, a regular theatre, a sculpture gallery, a flower shop and a picture frame shop, a used paperback book shop and a scuba diving shop (the coast is at least 2 hours away) and several restaurants. They do have a few practical things like a small supermarket, a laundromat and drive-through pharmacy.  They have a wide range of churches, and at least five coffee shops.  One of the churches is so pretty, I am threatening Mike I might join it. They do not have a pub, and only one rather dubious looking bar.  You can walk round the whole town in about 10 minutes, although everybody else drives.  Everything shuts down at 3:00pm on a Saturday afternoon, which was too bad for me, because I thought it would stay open until 5.:00.

The bar, the Thai restaurant, the drive-thru (sic) pharmacy...

I resigned myself to going to a coffee shop, just as my mother-in-law drove past us with Antonia so she was very fortunately able to take us to the best coffee shop that was still open.  Given that it's summer, most of the coffee shop's drink list consists of iced coffee or iced tea.  Every church in town will be preaching Richard Dawkins from the pulpit before I will drink iced coffee or iced tea so I had a peach smoothie which was excellent.  Mike had iced Indian Chai with extra spices!!  You can really tell he's a native.

The view on the way back.

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