Bend

We left the Oregon Coast and headed inland with our destination being Sun Outdoors Bend. The trip over was a bit gnarly through the mountains:

Once we crossed the gap we saw the wildfire smoke. Not too bad, but still.

The Sun Outdoors Bend used to be called Crown Point and we had stayed there three years before. Still a beautiful location:

After getting set up we went to Brickhouse restaurant for steaks. The steak was good and since it was still early we headed over to a speakeasy called The Broom Closet Bar located at the McMenamins Old St. Francis.

Here’s the door:

The broomsticks were designed by the same artists that created the brooms in the Harry Potter movies!

There was a little niche that had a table in it and on the ceiling were broomstick handles.

People had stuck notes in the gaps that you could pull out and read, comment and then return. You could spend the entire evening there reading through them! How much fun!

The next day we looked around the downtown area before settling on lunch at the Pine Tavern which sits on the Deschutes River.

What a great little place! We went to a farmers market to get some veggies when we heard from Molli, Jeff and Flip that they were in town and having a beer at the Bend Brewing Company. Jeff and Flip (their hiking buddy) had just finished summitting Hood Mountain nearby.

It was great seeing them again!

Since we had a filling lunch we decided to have appetizers back at our coaches. It was a lot of fun watching the Olympics and playing cards.

We floated on the Deschutes the following day.

OMG did we have fun! The rapids were the best part. However, when we exited we were freezing – I guess we really are Floridians now. We had to head back to the coach to get some hot showers in to warm up!

We were able to get the dogs out to play:

We decided on going to the Hook & Plow Bend for dinner. Outstanding food!

Apparently the restrooms had some interesting wallpaper in them:

We decided to have dessert at Pine Tavern as we had seen the Mississippi Mud Pie the previous day. It did not disappoint! To top off the evening we had Espresso Martinis.

Katrina got out to play some pickleball while I worked on the blog and I was able to watch the US Men’s Gymnastics at the Paris Olympics. Wonderful to see them capture the Bronze medals!

Once we all got ready we headed into town for lunch at a place called Spork. Mexican Asian Fusion. It was really good!

We took the dogs down to the riverfront to take them on a hike. They loved the truck ride:

They also loved walking around and seeing the sites:

And watching the float riders go over the rapids that we did the day before:

We all loved the Bend sign:

Bear loved the adventure so much that he thought he was the king.

Back to the coaches to start packing up for our next stop in Walla Walla to taste some big reds.