Anniversary in Bend

Aren’t these pretty? BN got them for me to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. That’s not all – he also made me a wooden jewelry box with embedded magnets to keep the lid on. He used some exotic hardwoods he’d gotten for Christmas – purple heart and zebra wood. I love the way the cross grains and lengthwise grains create subtle contrasting surfaces. Inside was a whole collection of silver earrings – I’d been wanting some hoops to wear all the time comfortably with no posts poking into my head.

We took a weekend getaway to Bend, which is east of Eugene. We stopped for lunch at Sahalie falls. It was a warm day but sitting within sight of the falls was cold! The rushing water really cooled the air.

Our hotel room looked out over the Deschutes river, which had a slight dam to create a calm surface for ducks and geese in Drake park downtown. We drove a short ways into downtown to find some dinner, and discovered that there was a pro bicycle racing event going on right in the middle of town – they’d closed off a several-block area and the racers did laps. Our dinner location was right at the corner of the home stretch and after we ate we watched the women’s race. It was very exciting!

From there we went to watch Wall-e. It was a sweet little movie. I appreciated that the tone wasn’t preachy (it could easily have been, with a planet made uninhabitable by garbage and the human race turned totally sedentary) and I think perhaps we were meant to identify with the robots more than the humans? It was definitely more about Wall-e and Eve than about the cruise passengers.

On Saturday morning we went to Smith Rock. We hiked up to the top of one of the formations and got some great views of Central Oregon, the various Cascade peaks, and a cute little lizard.

Smith Rock State Park is a rock-climbing hotspot, and we observed some climbers on Monkey Face, a huge pillar that’s a signature feature of the park. If you click on the image above you can see a climber right below the shadow on the lower left face.

We were very hot and sweaty after our hike, and we wanted to go swimming in Tumalo creek but we figured we’d go back to Bend first and get some lunch. A short way into our drive back we realized the car was overheating. To make a long story short, we did make it out to the creek to swim, quite a bit later than we’d planned, and after learning several new facts about the cooling system of the car, plus discovering the insider trick of pouring roadside creek water over the engine to cool it off.

When we got back to town after our swim, we cleaned up and went to check out the street fair that was going on downtown. (When we planned our trip we had no idea that Bend was going to be such a happening spot this weekend!) There were lots of booths selling art and crafted goodies, and several live bands. One of them was really groovy and we stayed to listen. The singers reminded us of some girls we’d heard singing down by the creek. I think it was the same girls.

We ate dinner at Typhoon, a very good Thai place. Best Thai we’d had in awhile, and it felt very upscale without being too pricey. Bend as a whole is so much more upscale than Eugene, astonishingly so. After a leisurely breakfast on Sunday morning we strolled in Drake park and looked at the geese and ducks.

Driving home, we took a detour to Waldo Lake, where we’d been with my family last summer camping in the Cascades. The mosquitoes were just as vicious this year, but we scampered past them as best we could and the lake was cold, clear and refreshing. I’m amazed by how many activities we fit into this trip – besides the ones we planned on, even. It was a lot of fun.