you turn a corner and BOOM!
i know i already shared about our adventures at sparks lake, but we experienced so much more during our quick trip to bend, oregon! first off, the drive is gorgeous. and second off, i really like this city because it reminds me of colorado (well, without my amazing family and friends and less altitude). the scenery is spectacular, people are friendly and i’m surrounded by more than one mountain). our goal was to leave by 8am on saturday and we made it to the car by 8:07am, which is pretty darn impressive i would say. ravery also pointed out that it’s only a 4 hour drive so he wasn’t entirely sure why i had packed a whole box of wheat thins (self-explanatory), cashews, turkey jerky, almonds, 6 granola bars, a new package of fig newtons, trailmix, apples and bananas (foreshadowing of when he thanks me profusely on the way home).
fancy, huh?
we arrived at the toastmasters’ meeting and found some incredibly friendly and helpful people. they also provided some delicious food and even though we ate big sandwiches right before we got there, i made myself a plate full of goodies. if you’re observant, you may also notice my signature contribution as of lately with the blue/brown plate and whole wheat honey sweetened banana bread as well. ravery received great insight on his speech, a few people even stayed close to 3 hours later to continue helping him-so nice!
amazing.
we also did this amazing ‘do-whatever-you-can-to-be-distracting’ exercise when ravery gives a speech and we are a little disruptive. this included cellphones going off, people talking, walking around, putting chairs away, the lights being shut off, pens being thrown at ravery (ok, it was just one and it may have come from me) as well as my very favorite of someone getting on the floor and rolling around. ravery did a pretty good job-despite some laughter- of continuing to give his speech. below is a picture said ground rolling.
after we wrapped up here, we went back with pat, our ‘host a toast’ who let us stay with her and worked on the speech some more (can you tell he’s extremely dedicated to this?) then we headed to an early dinner and on the way spotted a super fun contraption that was carrying a wedding party around town. the groomsmen were on one side, the bridesmaids on the other with the happy couple in the back. oh and a BARTENDER in the middle of all of them! how stinkin’ fun would that be?! please note that they had a designated bike driver. it was called the “cycle pub.” genius. i was just looking at their website and they will even take you around the town with stops at your favorite breweries, pizza places or to get ice cream. so fun! when we arrived at the restaurant, we saw a couple arrive by horse and carriage (sorry no picture). there are some seriously creative ways to get around bend, oregon!
in case you missed it, check out why on earth we would ever get up at 4:20am the next morning and why we left a 100% tip for our waitress here.
after our amazing and quite lengthy sunday morning, we headed through sisters, oregon to check out the head of the metolius river. the sign we encountered before heading down the path read “Down this path is a full sized river, the Metolius, flows ice cold from huge springs. The springs appear to originate from beneath Black Butte. However, geologists say this is misleading and believe the springs have their origin in the Cascade Mountains to the West. The unusual fault which created Green Ridge is thought to have brought the springs tot he surface, thus releasing the beautiful Metolius River. Love, Deschutes National Forest” okay, it wasn’t really signed love but official sings would be a lot better if they did. basically it was way cool because it appeared to just bubble up from the ground and then produce a lot of water.
picture of the head of the metolius river and us enjoying the 80 degree weather!
we decided to head back to portland but the way we went back this time contained a lot less restaurants that we could eat at. most were small diners offering lots of amazing sounding burgers and milkshakes and another place only had fried things and i think you had to be wearing at least 3 pieces of harley davidson gear to eat there. did you already guess that this is where the foreshadowing would occur? we had to drive another 2 hours until we found a quiznos at 2:47pm so in the mean time ravery ate 2 granola bars, the cashews, rest of the wheat thins and we split a row of fig newtons. win for the wife being obsessed with snacks! here is a semi-the-same-picture from the last time we drove back from bend to portland in march. i prefere this weekend’s weather for driving. hope everyone else had a great weekend!
three sisters mountains
life lesson: make sure you have adequate food and water, especially on road trips! nothing is worse than getting “hangry” (anger resulting from hunger) and being trapped in a car with someone (i’ve been guilty of this).
question: what are essential road trip foods that you must have?
