We sat down and ordered coffee's and juice and contemplated what to eat for food. I wanted a combo with eggs, hash browns and meat. Mom and dad shared another type of combo with pancakes and Ben ordered a skillet with pancakes. There was a lot of food on those plates. I sure hope I can eat it all because I'm sure we wouldn't be eating lunch today since everyone had plans. Dad was going to hang out with Ron and we were going to adventure around the area looking for cool spots and some geocaches. The food was delicious and I recommend it to everyone!
Dad drove us into Bend so we could see some of the places he used to hang out at. He took us down the road he used to live on and showed us the Bend house. I took a picture of it even though I know it's changed a lot since they've lived there.
It was fun to see as an adult since the last time I believe I was here was around the mid 1990's. Then he took us to Sawyer Park.
That little park was amazing! I loved the volcanic rocks and the formations in the Deschutes River. We spent probably an hour there sitting on the rocks with our feet in the water. Then we drove back to Redmond.
We went back to the hotel and got ready for the rest of the day and dad met up with Ron. Mom looked up a few things on the computer before we left. We made sure we had enough water with us since it was going to be 90+ the entire day. We found out how far Smith Rock State Park was away from Redmond. It was literally like a 20 minute drive from the hotel. We followed the Nuvi's directions and sadly we had to pay a small fee to be here which I forgot because in Washington, we have to buy $30 Discovery Passes to go to state owned land.
Ben forgot socks so he went sockless in his hiking shoes. We got all of our stuff together so we could walk around the trails, that included enough water (because it was pretty hot at that point), the hiking pole and the appropriate shoes and clothes. We took a bunch of pictures as we walked to a couple of geocaches along the short looped trail. When we got to the first one, Laws of Eight (GC3FYC9) we thought it was going to be next to the cliff. Once the phone settled down we saw it was a bird house in the tree. I signed our names, took a few pictures and put it back as I found it.
Mom hung out along the edge of the cliff and noticed people wandering by the river down below. We looked closer...are they naked? OMG they are naked! Mom took some pictures on her phone and sent them to dad to be creepy. That's something you just don't see everyday. Haha!
We walked the short distance to the next one in the area, Johnny Bench (GC55YA7). We thought it was going to actually be at the bench that overlooks the cliff but we found it in a pile of rocks instead. I was totally thrown off. I unburied the cache and took it over towards the bench. To my surprise the cacher before us left two unactivated geocoins inside. I have never been that lucky finding a cache ever! The cacher was from the east coast. After signing it and getting a picture we hid it back better than we found it under the rocks.
We walked back towards the Escape after chatting with a guy getting ready for a class of climbers. We drove closer to Smith Rock Earthcache (GC1WHHW). We parked and walked the less than 300 feet to the informational sign. I took pictures of the sign just so we had the info instead of writing down all the answers. We discussed all the answers to make sure we took care of them all, took pictures of us at the site and headed back to the Escape.
We drove to the most western side of the parking lot just to see what was on that side. More of the river and you could see a bunch of people getting ready to climb. Ben kept saying, "I wanna play." I told him that we couldn't because we didn't have the time nor the equipment. I also added that we could come back here again someday and do some climbing. He was okay with that answer. I sure hope we can come to Bend again in the future. I really like it here.
We left the state park and headed towards Madras. We really had no plans as to where we were going (I just kinda made it up as we drove north) we just wanted to see some cool stuff. We took a side road to go see what The Cove Palisades had to offer. The park is situated among towering cliffs that surround Lake Billy Chinook, which was a reservoir. When we got down by the water I was not too impressed with the lake. It was green and it smelled. Probably from all the sun this area gets in the summer time and too much plant growth.
I tried finding a cache in the park but ended up aborting because it was getting hotter and I really didn't want to walk through the brush in my flip flops. We got back into the Escape and headed back up the hill. There was one, Welcome to the Cove (GC2JPHD) we could get that didn't require hard core searching. It was by the state park sign and I found it quickly.
I saw the Madras had a virtual cache, Jackie (GCA645) and needed to go get it. Since virtuals are so rare and we can never create more of them so you must go get them when you have a chance to. We followed Nuvi to the coords and it took us to the front of someone's house with an odd looking wooden statue of a lady's head. I got our necessary photo and we headed into the downtown part looking for a store to get ice.
We found a small grocery store in the middle of town and went inside. We got a few waters, some ice and I wanted some mango Snapple.
Then mom saw the Dairy Queen and wanted a Blizzard. I found a way to get across the street in the middle of the traffic to get mom a Blizzard. I said since we were there why not get one too. We all got Blizzards and ate them as we headed back towards Redmond.
We stopped at Peter Skene Ogden State Park to see the view of the river and the bridges and of course to pick up two geocaches. The earthcache, Crooked River Gorge High Bridge (GC2AM14) and a traditional travel bug hotel, Bubblegummers 97 TB Hotel (GC60EVR) which were both pretty easy to do and find. We spent a good half hour to 45 minutes enjoying the view and grabbing the caches.
We drove back into Redmond to find a Walmart to grab a few things for tomorrow's excursion. We bought some, doughnuts, milk, PBJ, bread and some laundry detergent and dryer sheets so we could wash our clothes at least once while we were here. We already had a bunch of snacks and drinks in the cooler already. I ended up getting a couple of $4 tank tops just because they were hard to find at our Walmart.
We grabbed one more cache, Where's Wally (GC4EB8A) in the parking lot before heading back to our hotel to relax a bit.
Ben and I really wanted to go eat at one of the breweries in downtown Bend so we did some research on them before we said yes. Mom and dad went to Abby's pizza with Ron. We didn't realize they were having a block party downtown so we had to be creative. We originally wanted to go to Deschutes Brewery but ended up at Bend Brewing Company because the line was shorter. We actually found a parking spot when we got there.
We walked right in and there was an available table right away. Our waitress gave us our menus and we each ordered drinks. We both got the burger and fries and I ordered one of their multi award winning beers, the Outback Olde Ale and Ben had the Pinnacle Porter. We were there for about an hour while we ate our food and watched the current baseball game on ESPN.
Then we strolled along the river walk (which was called Mirror Pond, a section of the Deschutes River), watched the ducks swim against the current and we crossed the bridge onto the other side where a cache, Pageant Park (GC6ENKY) awaited us.
It looked more like someone's side yard than it did a park. We found the pop top cache on the metal picnic table. We didn't bring a pen with us so we took a picture of it for proof.
We headed back across the bridge and through the river park back into downtown. We were trying to figure out where this virtual cache, Mark, Get Set, Go? (GCG4KV) was. It didn't give us much except puzzle like coords in the middle of the river with a picture we had to go by. Some local overheard us and tried helping us. She thought it was one of the old buildings by the library, which was a couple blocks to the west of us, or the police station. We thanked her and continued on our way. We looked at every building and eventually I found it on the Boy's and Girl's Club on the corner. We noted our coords and took a picture.
We walked back to the street fair and wandered around for a while. There were several bands playing different genres of music. Some of it was catchy, some of it was familiar and some of it we just couldn't stand.
Ben ended up finding the EMT tent and talked to a guy for a while about the program. Basically they travel all around Oregon and are large event EMT's. Ben wanted to go into the Deschutes Brewery to try their beer from the tap. I was getting tired so I didn't have one. He ordered an IPA and we just hung out until he was done. It wasn't quite midnight when we walked back to the Escape and headed back to Redmond.
We got back to the hotel about 20 minutes later and got ready for bed. Before I went to bed, we got on the laptop to check out some information on Crater Lake since that's where we were going tomorrow. Today was an adventure filled, hot, long day but totally worth it!
Next Adventure: Sister's Quilt Show, Crater Lake and Some Caching
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