Welcome back to our Flashback Friday Posts! I believe the first post we did in this series was our Colorado Snowboarding Trip (Click Here For That One!). We have taken a good amount of trips that I haven't written about, so I came up with the Flashback Friday series where every Friday there will be a new post from a different adventure we have taken in the past. This week is all about our trip this past summer to Bend Oregon with my brother David and his wife Kait. Why Bend Oregon? Why NOT is more like it! Bend offered so much for us to do (unfortunately we couldn't do it all but we tried!); Mountain Biking, Fishing, Kayaking, Backpacking, lots and lots of beer tastings.... the list goes on and on. We are already planning a trip back soon to try out snowboarding on Mt Bachelor. Here are a few highlights from our trip:
Breweries Galor!
In Bend there are a total of 26 Breweries. Unfortunately we were only able to experience four of them. But the four we did get to try didn't disappoint! We were pleasantly surprised by how good they were. The first one we tried was recommended by our friend who lives in Portland. Crux brewery was awesome on all accounts; location, food, and of course beer. Their brewery offers not just beer but also a place to hang out and play games out on the lawn. They had this awesome pretzel with this delicious cheese dip! (Seriously drooling right now thinking about it). Luke loved their Stout and if you come at the right time you'll get to see an amazing sunset. 10 Barrel Brewing Co. was our next stop. They have a full restaurant and an awesome outdoor/indoor seating area. It gets pretty crowded but you can drink a beer while you wait. We ended up there twice on this trip but mostly just for the food. We did get to check out another brewery with an awesome menu; Deschutes Brewery. They have a full restaurant as well but we mostly just did a beer tasting. Our favorite though was Boneyard Brewery! Our friend from Portland knows a worker there and we got a private tour. It was freaking awesome! We got endless tastings while being shown their process of brewing beer. A definite thumbs up experience!
Lakes, Lakes, Lakes!
While in Bend we wanted to explore as many of the lakes as possible in the surrounding area. We drove by Lake Paulina, Devil's Lake, Elk Lake, and Lava Lake. All of which were gorgeous which made it hard for us to leave one to move onto the next. We spent some extra time exploring Sparks Lake. We brought our own blow up kayaks and headed out on the Lake. Obviously you're surrounded by endless beauties; trees, animals, Mt Bachelor looming behind you. Its absolutely breath taking! Surprisingly the lake wasn't very deep at all and due to the time of year we went it didn't get dark until after 9pm. It felt like we were out there forever because the sun refused to go down. It was perfect! The boys did get to do some fly fishing in East Lake. They caught so many fish that they ended up going back two days in a row! The lake was filled with fly fisherman which made it easy to pick their brains for other good fishing spots. Not to far from East Lake are these awesome Lava Tubes that you can go and explore. So we figure we'll just go and check one out. We ended up at the Lava River Cave where we rented a big flash light, grabbed our head lamps, got a quick introduction from the park rangers then we were on our own. It was pitch black down there and pretty cold. We hiked about a mile into the cave until we couldn't go any further. This wasn't our first cave but it was definitely a nice little unplanned adventure. It would be cool to check out all the lava tubes in the area.
Hanging Out Around Town
Exploring the town of Bend was probably our favorite thing to do. Everyone was extremely nice and there seemed to be endless things to do. We were able to spend some time in Old Town during a festival. There were so many people there and tons of food vendors. We stayed at the Hampton Inn & suites right by the new part of town which made it super easy to explore the Deschutes River. Just a walk from our hotel were tons of shops including their awesome two story REI and this great Fly Shop. It felt like the boys spent hours looking around and talking to the guys in the shop about fish. While the boys got to enjoy the fly shop, us girls found a wine bar to enjoy. The Va Piano Tasting Room has an outdoor patio and lawn area for people to come and sit while enjoying a nice glass of wine. Kait and I felt very much at home there! We continued to explore the area by walking along the river. We found a Casting Training Course for fly fishing, people rafting down the river, and other people surfing the river (seriously, it was freaking awesome!). At one point we came to a Park that had mine and my brother's last name; McKay Park! It was as if they WANT us to stay forever ;)
Bend Oregon has definitely made our favorites list! Check out our YouTube video below for more from our trip :)