Driving to Bend/Redmond, Oregon

A few months ago, mom talked to me about her and dad going to Bend to go to the quilt show in Sisters and to see dad's friend Ron.  I thought it would be cool to go to Bend again, its been a really long time since I was there and there were some really cool things to go and see.  I asked mom if Ben and I could go with them she said sure.  I took the Friday off so I could make the trip worthwhile.

The night before I got most of everything together so we could leave right after I get off of work.  Ben was home so he could get the rest of it done and packed in the Escape before I got home.  All I would have to do is change my clothes, pack a couple more things, grab a snack and head out.  When I got home the Escape was empty.  I was so mad.  Why wasn't the stuff packed?  He had all day!  I went in the house and he was in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower.  Why wouldn't you pack the Escape and then take a shower?  It makes more sense to get the work done and then get cleaned up not the other way around.  I ended up packing everything in about 10 minutes while he took a shower.  He threw his stuff in there when he was done.

We ended up leaving around 5:00.  I still want to know what he did all day.  I was so confused.  Anyway, it was a quiet ride down I-5, he played his games on his phone, slept for a little while and then almost to Woodburn we started talking about the situation.  I told him my side, he added his side and then we got off topic and talked about some other stuff.  Almost similar to a talk we had during the last night in the TriCities a few weeks back.

I decided to drive all the way down to Salem and cut over on Hwy 22 towards Sisters.  I probably should have taken Hwy 26 east instead.  Oh well.  We stopped and got gas and found a Fred Meyer to grab some food.  We ended up with some Lunchables, soda, vitamin waters, licorice nubs and some chips since they didn't have any popcorn.  We got back on the road.  I knew we were going to get to Redmond after 10 p.m.

We headed east towards Detroit Lake.  I really wanted to stop and get a few caches along the way.  I got on the phone and checked the map.  There were some up ahead in a town called Mill City.  It was definitely a small town.  The North Santiam River flowed through the middle of town.  The first cache, Your Four Pennies Worth (GC6TAWN), had a bunch of favorite points so we stopped.  It was located in front of Poppa Al's, one of the popular eating joints, in the area.  We weren't hungry yet so we just grabbed the cache.  This one required you to have pennies with you because you had to put them into a altered gum ball machine.  Once you put them in you turned the handle and the cache turned and a hole revealed the cache.  It was pretty cool.  We signed our names and took a few pictures.

The next one, Fish On!! Troll's Fish Too! (GC3QCAM) was down by the river near the pedestrian bridge.  There were several people fishing but they could care less about what we were doing.  It was getting a little dark, especially in the shadowy areas, and I was hoping we could find it right away before it got darker and the mosquitos came out to eat Ben.  After searching in two different places we found the medicine bottle.

That was the last time we got out of the Escape until we got to Redmond.  We drove past Detroit Lake shortly after our visit to Mill City.  I'm sure my family and I have been here in the past but it was so long ago I can't remember.  Hwy 22 seemed like it went on forever and more so when it got really dark.  It lightened up as we were going over the Santiam Pass.  We drove between Mount Washington to the south and Three Fingered Jack to the north.  You could see the lights of the cities off in the distance.

When we got to Sisters, you could smell the Pine trees, through the Escape's ventilation system.  We got to the junction where you could go to Bend, to the south, or Redmond, to the north and we wanted to go north but there was construction in the middle of the night.  It was kind of awkward on how we had to go about it.  There wasn't a lane to turn down to get to Redmond.  I pulled over and asked the construction sign holder and she pointed me through the vacant dirt lot/side of the road to the lane going to Redmond.  It was a little weird.

I could tell it was getting late because I was getting tired.  We still had at least a half hour until we got there.  I was so ready to go to bed because today was really long.  We finally arrived in Redmond about 11:00.  We made our way to the Motel 6 and called mom.  She told us the room number and Ben and I brought in the stuff we would need that night and left the rest in the Escape.

We spend the next half hour getting our beds ready on the floor with our camping gear and actually getting ready for bed.  I didn't care that we were on the floor I just wanted to go to sleep.  Around midnight is when I finally passed out.  It was glorious.

Next Adventure:  Sawyer Park, Smith Rock State Park, Madras, Crooked Bridge and Downtown Bend