shoe tree

I'm back. I unpacked pretty quickly last night (since midnight felt like 9 p.m.) so I thought I'd get a ton of stuff done today. Instead, I spent hours trying to figure out how to do that drill down toggle thingy with my archived posts on my various blogs. I've come to the conclusion that that particular "new" blogger feature is specific to their layouts, hosted blogspot style. I did figure out how to do the drop down menu bit, though, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

From Trip to Bend, OR

Anyway, I wanted to blog a bit about my weekend in Bend while it's all still fresh in my mind. In short, I had a really great time and I couldn't have asked for better weather. I flew out on Thursday afternoon, missing the major snowstorm of 06-07 back here in Boston, spending the next four and a half days in dry, sunny, upper-60s darn-near perfect Central Oregonian weather.

The trip consisted of sleeping in, walking along the creek near my Dad's place (in the pic above), a day of shopping with my Grandma, lots of eating (other than Dairy Queen and the Original Pancake House, every restaurant we went to was new to me: McKay Cottage; Baltazar's mostly-seafood Mexican; the Jackalope Grill, where I had a tasty Jaeger Schnitzel; another Mexican restaurant I can't remember the name of now; a small café in the small town of Mitchell, and McMennamin's Old St. Francis pub), and some sight-seeing.

In addition to spending time in Bend, we spent an afternoon in nearby Sisters (I just love the Sisters Bakery - my faves include their brownies and marionberry scones) and all day Monday driving through the John Day Fossil Beds, home of the beautiful Painted Hills, where my Dad and I were in competition for who could take the best photo of this lone tree:

The Painted Hills are really spectacular; the photos, of course, hardly do it justice. There's one trail in the park - the Painted Cove trail - where the forest rangers have built a 1/4 mile trail that loops around one of the smaller formations, allowing you to get a closer look at the moon-like surface of the clay hills. We were a bit early for the wildflower season, which must be pretty spectacular in addition to the colors you see in the hills. Most of the hills, though, are red and gold, reminding me of those "big stick" cherry-pineapple popsicles we used to buy from the ice cream man. Yummers.

On the drive home we stopped to take a picture of this cottonwood tree bearing pairs and pairs of old shoes. I wonder how that happened? Did one person throw an old pair up and then passersby were inspired to stop and do the same? Are they mostly from nearby Mitchell? And I wonder how old is the oldest pair?