The Honeymooners, day one

Besides my ongoing effort to get a book published, there's another reason I've been sloppy about posting since my hike: I was planning a wedding.  Admittedly, I didn't do all of the work, but being the Unemployed One means I had more time to do a lot of it.  Luckily, neither of us plan on getting married again, so I'll probably never have to plan another wedding, but from what I heard, consensus was that we nailed it.

Then we went to Bend for a few days.

I missed Bend, and I'm not sure I fully appreciated how much I'd missed it until I got to go back.  Before the trip, I still felt conflicted about whether I'd even enjoy it.  It felt like telling a junkie, "here, just have a little crack... but no more, ever."  I was wrong.  It was great to be back in my city.

A fox napped peacefully in the yard of our rental. 

We stayed at a place The Girl found through Air BnB.  We had a little trouble finding it in the dark, jetlagged and exhausted the day after our wedding reception, but it was a great place.  We wouldn't have been able to cook much there, but that was never the plan.  By the end of the week, we actually felt bad that we hadn't gotten to spend more time enjoying the rental itself, but we couldn't stomach going to Bend just to sit inside.

My "black and white" at La Magie

Around the same time we decided to go to Bend, I decided that I wanted to visit one of my favorite places in town: La Magie bakery.  I'd consumed a lot of pastry and exotic coffee beverages there while writing on various projects, and on the day when Dad helped me leave town with all my worldly possessions, we carried a large bag of pastires and bread with us from the same place.  They had changed a lot, and all for the good.  I miss the comfy lounge upstairs, but they've expanded into the building next door, and now offer a full menu for breakfast and lunch.  The Girl and I split a chocolate croissant and an omelet (with fried potatoes--holey moley, those fried potatoes!!), and neither of us were hungry again until well after four that afternoon.  It's a shame, too, because there were lunch places I wanted to visit, too, and our breakfasts each day were so substantial that we never had a mid-day meal.

This gentleman and his ducks are frequently redecorated.  This time, they were ready for St. Patrick's Day.

We gave ourselves a quick tour of downtown, then drove to Pilot Butte.  It's a tiny state park that rises up from the middle of town, and is visible from almost everywhere in the town.  When I lived there, I used it as a landmark to tell other people and my visitors how to navigate.

Mt. Bachelor, seen from Pilot Butte

The view from the top is just as useful for navigation.  You can see the whole town laid out below.  My old office is still visible to the south.  On the Fourth of July, we'd gather in the office parking lot to watch the annual fireworks show launched from the top of the butte.  You could usually see the lights of firetrucks parked along the butte's spiraling road, because every couple of years the fireworks ignite the dry vegetation and the butte catches fire.  For weeks after such an event, you can see large charred areas when you hike there.

It's great to be back!

At the summit, in the center of a stone plaza, is a mountain identifier set in a compass face.  Directions and distances to many of the visible surrounding landmarks tell visitors what the various bumps and ridges are along the horizon.

Pilot Butte's mountain identifier

The Girl told me that she'd never hiked Pilot Butte in all her visits to Bend.  On our way down from the summit, we took the trail that circles the base of the butte, which I'd never done, so the first thing we did in Bend turned out to be new for both of us.  We were off to a great start!

sagebrush

We had both always enjoyed the River Walk trail, near the Old Mill District, so we headed there next.  She had walked it with me several times, and I used to run there following work, standing in the frigid Deschutes afterward to ice my shins.

This team of logging horses is made of shovel heads, trowels, gears, and other assorted bits of metal.  They are fantastic.

It was one of the places I recommended to all of my visitors, because it's an easy walk, and feels surprisingly wild considering it's in the middle of town.  Plus, there's lots of informative signs to tell you about the diversity of life along the river, and throughout Oregon.

Oregon Grape Holly, the state wildflower.

Greenleaf Manzanita

Ponderosa pines. The bark smells like vanilla.  I learned that as a kid visiting Arizona, and got to teach that little tidbit to several Oregon locals when I lived there.

Juniper berries

Good advice for everyone.

Rain threatened all afternoon, but we only got a brief sprinkle.

We still weren't hungry, but we had a couple hours to kill before dinner with my dad's cousin and his wife (I was a frequent guest of theirs for Superbowl parties and dinners when I lived in town, and helped put a roof on their greenhouse).  We used that time to visit another favorite spot: Meadow Camp.  It's a little upstream from the river walk.  Between the two spots is some good crack climbing.  We went the other direction, upstream, to Lava Island Falls.

The Deschutes River, somewhere west of Meadow Camp.

I don't know that I stopped grinning all day.  Come to think of it, I don't know that I stopped grinning for the entire three days we were in Bend.  I felt like I'd come home.  Dinner that night was at McMenamin's, a St. Pat's tradition for my cousin's family.  The Girl and I had a reuben and Irish stew, and we were serenaded by a pair of musicians working the tables.  Outside, we found two more performance venues, all on the same property, and both packed with green-clad people of all ages, happy just to be in Bend.  Who could blame them?

These gentlemen played traditional Irish music at the tables all night.  They played two Irish tunes for the newlyweds, at my cousin;s request.