Saturday, December 23, 2006

Bend Recap

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Finally got a chance to take a breather and post a recap of our trip to Bend, Oregon.  We seriously love that area so much that we already have plans to go back 3 times in the next year.


Saturday - We headed out Saturday morning.  The weather was beautiful but cold.  We had a bit of drama on the way up because of icy roads on Highway 97, a rent-a-truck crossed over into our lane and flipped off the side of the road right in front of us.  We immediately pulled over and while I called 911, Aaron ran over to help the person inside.  She was not hurt, just understandably quite hysterical.  Pretty darn scary for all involved and we definitely went slower after witnessing that.  After getting to Bend and checking into our hotel (Riverhouse), we headed out to get something to eat.  We found an excellent Mexican restaurant called the Ranchero.  It was only about 4pm but already it was getting dark which was kinda weird.  We then hit the outlets across town to find Aaron a new ski jacket and some boots.   That evening we took our first of a couple dips in the hotel pool.   Unfortunately to get to the pool we had to head out of our section of the hotel, outside, across a snow covered bridge, across an icy parking lot and into the pool house....it was C-O-L-D!


Sunday - We cruised around the Old Mill District, which is actually a newer area of town and really beautiful.  It was really, really cold but we managed to get some fun pictures along the Deschutes River.  We then headed over to the shopping area where there was an interactive children's museum we wanted to check out.  It's called Working Wonders and the kids loved it so much that we ended up staying there all day with a break in the middle for lunch at Red Robin.  It's like a miniature town inside with grocery store, construction area, post office, pizza parlor, pet hospital, simulated outdoors, etc.  The kids can then pretend to live in that town and become the different professions or people involved complete with outfits and all the props.   For dinner we hit a Food-4-Less for a take and bake pizza to take back to our hotel.  As a special treat we also consumed about 4,000 calories and $20 worth of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory treats after dinner!  Ooo...but it was good!


Monday - We headed to Mt. Bachelor and the kids got to try out snowboarding.  Jacob is a natural!  His short time skiing is now over and he wants to only snowboard now.  Look out world, he might be in a future Olympics!  Again the kids ended up loving hanging out on the mountain so much, that we ended up staying up there all day.   That evening we had dinner at one of our favorite places up there, Izzy's Pizza, ....lots of food and for cheap! 


Tuesday - We cruised around the town for a bit and then walked around the Downtown area before heading home.  All in all the trip was perfect and so nice to have a relaxing carefree few days in the midst of the December holiday craziness.


Check out just some (and there's still a lot!) of the pictures we took....Photos from Bend, Oregon

2 comments:

Angela said...

Oh Lisa, I have come to expect a lot of your photographic abilities, but these are just great, maybe some of your best yet. Some Bay Area friends of ours love Bend, too. They would live there if they could. I would settle for any place in the West right now. The West IS the best! :>)

Lisa Lee said...

Oh thank you so much Angela, I truly appreciate that. No pressure there though. LOL! :-)