Our vacation continued in Portland (because it’s important to vacation in your own town) with a visit to Hopscotch, an immersive art experience.
I loved this mural, and would love to have the artist paint a mural on the side of our house. Someday, maybe.
This installation was made of plastic garbage bags, and the lights changed colors making things seem otherworldly.
Here’s a close-up with slightly different colors.
This was my favorite installation. Because a ball pit is a very fun thing, especially when not in a Chuck E Cheese and with fun lighting.
Matt really liked this room, but I did not. You put on a headset that showed you, but from a different perspective. Then you got to walk around and shoot a basket and other fun things while dealing with that perspective.
This installation was a maze of neon.
From there, we went to Clarklewis and had a delicious dinner and many, many people wished us a happy anniversary (and also engaged us in conversation about our wedding.)
In Sisters, the air quality was terrible. Smoke from two forest fires was funneled right into the town. Because of that, we didn’t do any walking back and forth to the downtown area as I did on my last visit. But our very large room was a perfect place to hole up.
On Monday night we saw Blue Beetle at the Sisters Movie House and concluded that while Blue Beetle didn’t want to hurt anyone, he didn’t mind if his family did.
We also did another Exit escape room game, getting out of the labyrinth in just under an hour and a half.
On Tuesday, we stayed inside and played another escape room game, this one called the Deserted Lighthouse. It included four puzzles that you had to assemble in order to solve it, plus other things. I didn’t love it. Putting puzzles together while a timer is ticking isn’t my favorite thing. And we didn’t do very well, I think maybe getting 2 stars out of ten.
From there we drove to downtown Sisters to find food and stopped in at the Open Door to see if they happened to have a table. They had us wait a few minutes because someone was a no-show for their reservation and they wanted to see if they would appear. They did not, and we had a delicious dinner. Thanks, Open Door.
On Wednesday, after eating breakfast and lounging around, we took our timer photo and headed home.
On the way there, we stopped at On Any Sundae, and had a frozen treat. I tried the frozen “lasagna,” which was many layers of delicious fun. Matt got an overstuffed waffle cone. Both were quite good.
On the previous day, we left the Walker Trail Trailhead and headed to Lakeview for some lunch. We heard a squeal. It was intermittent, so at first we ignored it. Eventually we pulled over and had a look. But we know little about cars, so that wasn’t helpful. On we continued to Lakeview where we ate at a Chinese restaurant and headed back to our lodgings. Unfortunately, as we drove through town the squealing was super loud, so much so that people’s heads were turning. We pulled over and again looked at where we thought the source was, our front tire.
A man in a truck pulled over, immediately diagnosed the problem as a rock stuck in the wheel. He first crawled under the car to see if he could work the rock out that way. That didn’t work, so he asked us to pull the car up onto the curb and did another check. No rock. From there, he got a jack out of his truck and asked for our tire iron. That’s the level of car knowledge I have, so we could supply that. He took off the tire, but no dice. Back to the truck he went for more tools and he disassembled the breaks. It was at this point I did feel a prickle of worry that he might not be able to put things back together, but it was late afternoon on Sunday in a small town, so he was probably our best bet.
It turned out the rock was buried as deep as it could be in the workings of the tire. Our good Samaritan found it, reassembled everything, and was on his way. We compensated him for his time because when someone helps two city folk with no car knowledge in a small town, that is a very lucky thing.
We took the rock with us, and here Matt is modeling it for the camera.
So tiny, yet so loud! The rock then joined the other rocks in the driveway of our cabin.
On this day, it had rained all night and into the morning which wasn’t great for stargazing, but made for a cozy night playing board games in the cabin.
From there, we took the very long way to Bend taking Highway 395 past Lake Albert over to Highway 20. On Highway 20, driving became normal again, with much traffic. We stopped at Hampton Station for lunch and found it was overwhelmed with customers and almost out of food. Our sandwich choices were limited, but they were good.
In Bend, we did a Riddle Route and had fun exploring the city that way. I grabbed this picture of a very stripy couple walking while we were on our route.
The air quality in downtown Bend was hazy, but not terrible. But once we got to the north part of the city it was very smoky and then increasingly smoky on our drive to Sisters, where we checked into 5 Pine Lodge and shut ourselves in for the night.
We took a drive to see if we could find the place where hang gliders launched. The dirt roads challenged our Honda Civic, and we ended up pulling over and Matt exploring the last bit by foot. We then looped back to a scenic lookout for a picture.
We then did a short hike on the Walker Trail, going nowhere near the 30 mile length of the trail, but appreciating the scenery.
I liked these dollops of bright red-orange against the greens and browns on the trail.
From there, we went to Lakeview for lunch. On the way, an intermittent screeching began. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, here is another pretty view of our cabin. While the cabin is darling, we discovered that the screens weren’t tightly fit into the windows and it got a little buggy inside once the sun went down. I’ve set my sights on the Sunrise or Sunset cabins for our next visit.
We’ve been to this viewpoint many times, including the chronicle of this visit in 2014 with one of my favorite picture of Matt. It’s a deep crevasse, that viewpoint, and thus good for Central Oregon Bungee Adventures to set up shop.
It’s not a speedy process, the bungee jump. After getting strapped in there’s the long wait to get the courage to make the jump. The first person we saw jump went relatively quickly, the second one too longer. But she eventually did it.
It turns out the fun part while watching is not the initial jump, but the first bounce back up. Here’s a photo to orient yourself. Take note of where the bridge meets the side of the crevasse before scrolling to the next picture.
The jumpers go all the way down, and then pop! right back up. They tend to have arms and legs flailing as they bounce.
Once all the bouncing stops, they are reeled up so that another jumper can take their place.
“I can’t believe we will be doing that in just one hour!” cried one of three older teenagers who were also watching. We didn’t stay around to see their jump, but I bet they had fun.
The first part of our vacation was exploring the Oregon Outback, a place I really enjoyed. First of all, driving is much more fun when you are the only car in sight for miles and miles. I also really enjoyed the landscape as it is similar to what I grew up with in Boise.
This is the bathhouse that covers the biggest hot springs–fed pool. This picture shows fence rails and that’s where the three outdoor pools are. They are of varying temperatures and we found them to be generally hotter than the main pool.
Here is our cabin, Manzanita. Inside the decor is very eclectic as if it was sourced from various thrift shops. In other words, my kind of place.
Aside from a bed and a kitchen sink and hot plate, there was also a toilet and sink. Super luxury. Here is the glamor shot.
On the first night we played Micro Macro Crime City and had fun staring at the drawing to identify the various crimes that were being committed. This is a fun game that can be played by kids and adults alike. (There were some mature scenarios that are not kid-friendly, but they were clearly marked.)
I like to make some mark in one corner of my flat sheets so that I don’t have to try the sheet in a few directions in order to make length and width match the bed.
I went all out with this monogram, part of a download that includes four different treatments of the alphabet.
I learned that it’s tough to keep those outer lines straight. I think in the original they are straight stitches, but I switched them to backstitch because I thought straight stitches would catch on things in an active-use object. I also switched the French knots to figure-eight knots, as I prefer them.
Sometimes this color combo doesn’t work for me, but I like how it turned out this time.
The downside of fancy sheet monograms is that the back is very visible—it’s different if things are in a hoop. Maybe in the future, I could cut a square or circle to cover the back and tack it down so only back stitch or running stitch show. But maybe this is just fine.
Antares requires eye medication that is cheapest when bought from Chewy. I’ve ordered it multiple times, and, save one time, each delivery has been left on my doorstep despite our signs that ask that all packages be brought to the back porch.
Every time this happens, I contact Chewy and explain that the problem hasn’t been fixed, despite me doing all the things they have told me to do. And every time they write back and apologize and assure me it won’t happen again. And then it happens again.
As I have been telling them, things are stolen from my doorstep, hence the request to not leave things there. And today it happened. I was riding home from work and saw an opened Chewy box on Interstate about three blocks from my house.
I knew my box had been delivered, so after checking all the places, I walked back to see that indeed, the opened box was my box. Luckily, the thief wasn’t interested in my cat’s $60 dollar eye medication and abandoned the box, so the biggest damage was that I got to bring home trash.
My email telling them of the theft was met with the same apology and reassurance that it wouldn’t happen again. From the future, I can say the pattern continues.
I will be quite happy when I don’t have to deal with Chewy any longer.
