The trip to Oregon in August had three components to it. The first was a stopover at Mt Hood, the 2nd was in Bend and the 3rd was a visit to the Willamette valley south of Portland. We spent a couple days in Bend. This is the second time I’ve been to Bend and each time I’ve been fortunate to go when the weather was close to ideal.

There’s something that just seems to suit me about Bend. Part of it’s the beauty of the area around Bend of course: mountains, lakes, streams, trees. There’s great hiking and biking to be had in and around the area. There’s also a small town feel to the place and yet some big city amenities like interesting restaurants, markets and shops.

The picture of me off to the right was taken by Kem as we wandered through Drake park near the center of town. The Picasa slide show below is of various points along a hike we did at Tumalo Falls. Tumalo Falls is west of Bend a short drive and in part of the Deschutes National Forest. The hike was around 7 miles and took us along Tumalo Creek. The parking lot and trail starts within view of Tumalo Falls – the largest and first falls shown in the pictures – but along the trail there were easily a half dozen more falls along the stream.

We were well past half way on the hike when the trail just seemed to stop. We backtracked a ways to see if maybe we’d just missed a turn. Nope, so we turned back again. The trail just seemed to end at this rather sizable creek. At least it seemed sizable enough that we didn’t feel like wading across it. As we looked more closely, sure enough, the trail proceeded on the other side. In fact, someone had even carved a big arrow into a fallen log that pointed across to the other side. The only way over seemed to require making our way over a fallen tree that was over the creek, but doing so meant first getting to and then climbing over the tree’s sizable root ball. Hmm, maybe not. We wandered a bit further up the creek and found another fallen log. Thankfully this one was a bit easier to climb up on and get across. Our big adventure on an otherwise easy and beautiful hike.

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