Bend, Orgeon

We have had a great time in Bend, Oregon so far.  I don't think either of us would consider moving here because it is awfully city-like, but it sure is nice.

We pulled into the area from Crater Lake National Park.  We first started off with a drive through La Pine and Sun River.  Misa wanted to check out Sun River because we saw that it hosts lots of triathlons throughout the year.  It turns out that this town was just one big development, so it immediately got crossed off our list.  We camped out in Deschutes National Forest the first night.

On our first full day here, we went to downtown Bend.  It is a very vibrant outdoorsy town which looks like it is getting built up very quickly.  We turned off our forest service road and started seeing development after development.  It has all the chain stores you would ever need as well as a plethora of coffee shops and yoga studios.  It is pretty apparent why Bend was named the most overpriced real estate market in the country a few years ago.  It is probably a great place to live or raise a family if you are into the outdoors and don't mind small-city living.  The population is around 80,000 people, a lot larger than we are looking for.
We were needing a shower so we started asking around.  We found a gem in the city in the form of McMenamins Old St. Francis School.  This unique place in the city was the site of an old Catholic school.  They have a small hotel, a few bars, a restaurant, a brewpub, a theatre, and a Turkish bath.  We decided to check it out.  The entry fee for the Turkish bath was a mere $5 per person and they required you to shower first!! Perfect.  The bath and the showers were ok (could have been hotter), but the feeling of cleanliness was perfect.  We ended up eating at the restaurant and having some good beer as well so it was a nice evening.

The following day we went for a hike in the desert Badlands of Bend. It is crazy to go from snow to hot, sunny desert in only a 40 minute drive!

Today we went up to Mount Bachelor and I did a few splitboard runs in the 60mph winds.  Everytime I got above treeline I felt like I was getting sandblasted by the snow.  It was really good to get out on my snowboard though.

We are going to spend a few more days in this area, we plan to check out Sisters, Oregon and go to a folk festival dance night there on Saturday night.  Tomorrow we are going to explore some hot springs in the national forest.

While we haven't found any towns that we would seriously consider moving to, I think we are headed in the right direction.  We both agree that the high desert isn't for us, so if we settle down in the northwest we will have to be on the wet side.  But it is definitely nice to know that there is a variety of landscape right around the corner.