Way To Go Bend, You Redeemed Yourself 🙂

Our last day in Bend dawned sunny and cold but it quickly warmed up. We did some chores in the morning, I hit the outlet mall which was a big disappointment because all the stores I wanted were gone 😦 and hubby hit Harbour Freight for some additional taillights for the back of the RV. Our new e-bikes are wider than our old bikes and we didn’t notice until I did the light check before we left Kelowna that they were partially blocking our rear taillights.   So fortunately I am married to a very talent man and he was able to easily add two more taillights to the bike rack for under $40.00. What a deal when you consider what it would have cost if someone rear ended us!

Not a great picture but they definitely are more noticeable than the lights on Maxx which, because I was so close, you can’t even see!

Shortly after noon hubby had the lights installed and I had come back empty handed from the outlet mall. The temperatures were rising quickly so we pulled out our bikes and headed out for a ride.

Shortly after we started we were off the road and onto a nice path through the forest.

Maybe fifteen minutes later we came out of the trees and joined onto the Deschutes River Trail, which follows along the Deschutes River.

Eventually the trail ended at the rapids. We followed a narrow dirt path up the river but had to turn around. It was becoming a mountain bike exercise and I was in flip flops and was afraid of catching my feet on the boulders, but honestly I really had no interest in riding that kind of trail so the flip flops made a good excuse 😀

We were shortly back on nicely paved trails and I was a happy camper again.

By this point we were getting hungry, and thirsty … it was really warm out! So we headed off on another bike trail toward 10 Barrel Brewery.

This year all of our favourite Bend breweries have let us down. We have been to 10 Barrel before and didn’t really find anything we liked but, since we weren’t have any luck at the other places, we decided to give it a go … and it was a great choice! This time both the food and the beer were excellent, and sitting on the patio under sunny, warm, skies made it all perfect.

Ten 4oz tastings for $12.00 and we found a few that we really liked.

I don’t usually post pictures of food but this was really good. We had a small pizza with a caesar salad and a bowl of Pumpkin Curry with rice. We shared all three dishes but couldn’t finish them … but it was yummy, especially the curry ☺

The picture below shows a bike station that was out in front of the brewery. We have seen these at a few breweries and they are really cool. There is a pump to inflate tires and several bike tools on cables in case you need to do some repairs. Maybe to many people are drunk biking and hitting things which is why the repair stations are there 🙂 Nope that wasn’t us, we are responsible bike riders!

After our late lunch we headed off again on another trail which was covered in leaves and so very pretty.

We also made a stop at McMenamin’s Pub and Brewery, which I have written about before, click here to check out that blog. The first time we were there the servers were very snobby and were not the least interested in customer service. The next time they were great and we found a Morning Foam Coffee Stout that we really liked, so we made a special effort to visit again on this trip. Yup they have come back full circle to terrible service, so terrible in fact that it gave us something to chat about with our seat mates at the bar … and they no longer have the Morning Foam Coffee Stout 😦 In the end we did manage to get a few sample and found another stout that we did like, Terminator Stout, and after much effort were able to get a growler filled.

Such a beautiful place and that is why we like to visit. This building was built in 1936 and was home to St. Francis Catholic School. In 2004 it was turned into a hotel where McMenamin’s Pub is located.

Our time in Bend came to an end and we headed down the road … with maybe a few extra bottles of beer, and a growler or two 🙂

Until next time …