Bend Trip Part 1

We are back from our trip to Bend! The weather was definitely not optimal as our visit to Oregon coincided with the arrival of the remnants of Typhoon Songda. So there was heavy rain and high winds for most of our visit. But we made the most of our time there even though the weather was pretty awful.

We arrived on Wednesday morning, got our rental car, and headed to Bend. We stopped on the way at a great Mediterranean restaurant called Nicholas Restaurant in the town of Gresham. We both got lunch bowls which were delicious. They even had GF pitas which is something I have never seen. We would highly recommend this place!

After filling our tummies, we headed down to Bend. The drive was gorgeous as we drove by Mount Hood.

The views on the drive were amazing!

We knew that Wednesday was going to be our only day of sunshine so we stopped at Smith Rock State Park on our way, which was a hike that Lauren had recommended. We did the misery ridge trail, which was super challenging as we hiked up to one of the peaks of this rock formation.

Sizing up the rock formation before our hike

At the base of the hiking trail. I was soooo overdressed as it was warm and sunny!

I'm on top of the world!!  Err, a giant rock!

After getting to the summit point, the trail leveled out and took you to the back of the rock formation. There were great views of the surrounding area.

I talked Phil into taking a picture (he HATES posed photography!).

Eventually the trail wound back down to the river. We took stops along the way so Phil could skip rocks, which is something he just has to do when we are by water!

After our hike, we continued onto Bend, which is about 30 minutes from Smith Rock State Park. As usual, we rented an airbnb for this trip. We stayed here - and below is a picture of the exterior of it.  It's a small home, but perfect for 2 people!  We'd highly recommend it to anyone visiting Bend as the location was perfect.

On Thursday morning, we woke up to rain. Lauren was planning to come over for the day but I told her to stay at home as there was a high wind advisory so I didn't think it would be nice enough for a hike, especially since she'd have her little guy Henry with. So we made plans to see each other on our way back to Bend.

After hemming and hawing about what to do, we decided to brave the rain and hike Tumalo Falls, which is about 30 minutes outside of Bend. This is what we had envisioned that hiking in Oregon would be like as it was so lush, green, and beautiful. You can see the waterfall in the parking area so after snapping some photos there, we headed up the trail.

Phil was very excited to take a photo together as you can tell from this picture

We followed the trail for a couple of miles and saw several waterfalls!

The views of the area were stunning! Of course photos just don't do it justice. I kept saying, "this area is beautiful!!"

After hiking for awhile, we headed back to Bend, got cleaned up and grabbed lunch. At 2 pm we did a tour of the Deschutes Brewery. The tour was very interesting, even for someone like me that doesn't drink beer. After the tour, you get to sample 4 different beers. They had homemade ginger ale and rootbeer for the non-beer drinkers, which were very good.

The brewery was HUGE. I can't remember how much beer they produce a year but it's A LOT! They are also the 2nd highest purchaser of hops, 2nd to Sierra Nevada.

That evening we went to dinner and then came back to our house and relaxed for the rest of the day! The next day ended up being quite interesting, but I'll tell you about that in my next post!

Have you visited the Pacific Northwest? I've been to Seattle multiple times, and this was my 2nd trip to Oregon as I was in Portland for the 2010 marathon.