Currently writing this a few days after the events. I’ve had a cold so my energy levels have been a little low. At the moment, as I type, we are sitting in the Comfort Suites in Astoria, Oregon listening to the sound of Sea Lions outside barking and honking which they seem to love to do all night. More about Astoria later.
So, back to the story in sequence… Bend to Engene today. Interesting country to pass through. Large parts of it are the Willamette National Forest.
We were curious to see if our impressions of Bend held up in a morning reviewing so we drove about in the residential districts east of downtown. And the impressions were still very favorable. Bend is, indeed, a nice town. It feels to me like in in Colorado someplace. I’m not sure what the twon does that makes it affluent. Skiing and the Annual Rodeo must be a part of it. There’s more I’m sure. It seems to have all the amenities that one loves in the Pacific Northwest and yet it’s considerably drier which can be nice.
From Bend, we drove northwest to Sisters. A town that calims 2000+ people but it looks a lot bigger than that. It has a nice western theme downtown and obviously has a lot to do with skiing in the area.
From there, we continued west into the Willamette National Forest and drove through miles and miles of forests and mountains. A lot of it was along the McKenzie Highway.
We continued along the road and into Eugene and arrived at Alan and Rita’s place in the south side of town.
I’ve known Alan and Rita since the late 80’s. They are good lifetime friends. The have a daughter, Sasha, who is a recent univeristy graduate and a son, Justin, who is in his last year of high school. Both wonderful young people.
After some visiting, we all went out for a look at the town and a meal. I’ve always like Eugene. It is a university town with a nice counter-culture feel to it as well as being a beautiful place. We put Colette up front in the car with Alan and Rita and I rode in the rear.
After some sight seeing, Alan took us to a beer place, The Steelhead, that also had a nice menu. It had a good atmosphere but not too noisy so we could talk easily. I had fish-n-chips which were great and a speciality beer that Alan recommended. After that, we went to a dessert speciality place (my, we are eating a lot!) and Colette and I shared a big piece of Blueberry Cheescake. Yum. Then we popped into the place were Sasha is working as a Barista. A beautiful place so more photos were taken.
Then home for a bit more chat and then we turned in for the night after a wonderfful day. Sasha was nice enough to give up her room for us for which we were very thankful.
dennis