Jim and Ione Darmiento was nice enough to invite Linna and I for a three day weekend in Bend, Oregon with their daughter and her husband. Bend is home to one of many microbreweries and to Mirror Pond which where our four bedroom rented house was located, right on the Deschutes river. We drove down on Thursday which was around 6 hours of driving from Seattle. They were barbecuing up chicken and hamburgers when we showed up.
Friday was mainly checking out the city starting with breakfast at a local cafe. I stopped at REI to get some local hiking maps and get the inside scoop on snowshoe trails and where dogs are allowed. After spending money at REI we headed for the local Safeway, Linna wanted to cook a huge pot of chicken thighs and vegetables that night for everyone. After Linna marinated the chicken, we decided to adventure out some and check out the snowshoe trailheads and determine if there was enough quality snow or not. After checking out three snow-parks, I was leaning toward this summer trail next to a snow-park which was directly across the highway from Mt. Bachelor. It had good snow and elevation, but it didn’t allow dogs. Jim and family went skiing as Linna and I were exploring, but we both made it back about the same time. Jim and I checked out the neighborhood micro-brewery before dinner, 10 Barrel Brewing www.10barrel.com that had outdoor seating…we didn’t have much time but we able to down two powerful pilsners before dinner was served.
Next day was snowshoe day and I decided to snowshoe up the summer trail on Tumalo Mountain even though dogs were not allowed. As we were getting our equipment on, a sheriff in a large Dodge Ram pick-up pulled in and parked for about 10 minutes, by the time we were ready to go he took off. We quickly got Macho out of the kennel and headed up. The climb was steady and straight up….almost perfect conditions for snowshoeing. The higher we got, the less trees there were to take cover from the warm sun. The whole weekend was in the mid-seventies and sunny, so waterproof sunscreen was a must. We made it to the top in about 1 1/2 hours and spent about a hour on top having our peanut-butter sandwich and taking pictures. That night we all went out to Chris’s Grill www.gregsgrill.com for dinner.
