Welcome to Oregon

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 8/5/19

I’ve never been to Oregon, although from what I’ve heard, read and seen in movies/TV I’d always thought that I’d like it. My impression was one of lush, green mountainsides with running water, decaying huge trees and wildlife running around everywhere. What we got was either flattish desert or dry high country with beautiful canyon drives and walks through huge ponderosa pines.

We stayed a week in Burns, which is about the midway point between Boise and Bend. It’s really the only point between those locations and a week was a bit much, even for slow movers like us. We explored south into the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and north into the Malheur National Forest. Walked through the woods, looked at more lava fields, even took a nice soak in some hot springs. Mostly we took it easy (hey, it’s allowed) and then moved on to Bend.

We had a busy four days in Bend. The two big things of interest were our visit to Tumalo Falls and our drive on the Cascade Lake Scenic Byway. The drive was very nice. We took the ski lift to the top of Mt. Bachelor, drove as far as Elk Lake (after receiving assurances from a nice ranger that we would see the prettiest spots if we drove that far), and took a beautiful walk circumnavigating Todd Lake. While on that walk we built up our karma by finding car keys in the grass on the far side of the lake. We rescued them and pretty easily found the owner. She would have had serious issues if they hadn’t been found as there was no cell signal and we were a long way from anywhere. Our good deed of the day.

We really liked the Bend area. Which is a good thing, since we’ll be back for a week’s stay.

PS: On the drive from Burns to Bend we picked up four chips in our windshield from flying stones. I mentioned this to a random guy in a rest stop and he told me he picked one up too. He was pissed. He’d had his windshield replaced a week earlier. So it goes.