Month: June 2025

On Friday, we headed to the Ochocos for a bikepacking trip near Big Summit Prairie. Here I am just before heading out:

We had beautiful weather and a beautiful ride. I was an animal, as usual, and powered through 50 miles and 4k feet of climbing no problem.

We saw a bunch of cool old cars braving the washboards on the gravel roads.

We found a nice campsite next to a creek.

On our second day of riding, we saw a lot of wildflowers.

When we finished our ride, we found a great campsite for our camper.

On Sunday, we went for a hike on Lookout Mountain, where we saw the Motherlode cinnabar mine:

The hike was great, though the expected 7 miles turned out to be more like 10 (to be expected when you’re dealing with The Bigs), and there were loads of wildflowers.

They don’t show up well in the photo, but we could see ten Cascade volcanoes from the top.

Climbing wall for gnomes?

Nan and Pop where here so we went to Smith rock.

On Tuesday we went to the High Desert Museum and saw the ‘Raptors of the Desert Sky Show’ which was amazing.

The next day we went mini golfing. Pop won, but I got my revenge.

On their last day we went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch and then to the go-karts. The go-karts were closed, so we played another round of mini golf which I won!

Another mural for Bend visitors to find.

While they were here, Nan and Pop cooked, cleaned, and helped us get caught up on some much needed gardening.

I made shrimp scampi for dinner, yum! You’ll notice Nan and Pop took the warm weather with them. It was 50 degrees F at dinner!

On Saturday, I helped Dad with a tire rack project

This week, I have outdoor climbing camp, but it doesn’t start until Tuesday. The weather warmed up Sunday, so we packed up the camper and headed to Trout Creek for some fishing.

Nan and Pop are in the house! We have been busy. Pop and I built a raised bed. We planted gold nugget cherry tomatoes.

On Saturday, we celebrated Pop’s birthday at the Sisters Rodeo. Nan and Pop tried out a few saddles but decided not to participate in any of the rodeo events.

Afterwards we celebrated with the traditional birthday steak and pesto pasta and then finished up with homemade ice cream sandwiches.

The next day we went to the Old Mill for coffee

then up to Elk Lake for some paddle boarding.

Costco sells $100 gift cards to a local Thai restaurant for $75. We got them on sale for $60, so we went to Noi Thai this week. I had the clay pot shrimp with glass noodles:

Mom had the spicy eggplant:

and Dad had the tamarind duck:

I built a speaker out of paper this week.

It works!

Jay was in Portland for a conference last week, so we met up in Hood River. Dad and I both got two days of windsurfing in.

Here I am working on getting into the footstraps:

Mom and I went to Ferment to drink Kombucha and beer while Dad was out sailing:

We stayed right down the street from Merle, the spurred African tortoise:

We also got to see Ben Webster at his son Max’s high school graduation party:

Only new food this week was flourless banana pancakes:

Check out these stairs. Pretty cool! Guests to Bend should see if they can spot them as they take in the sights.

On Saturday, we hiked part of South Sister for some…skiing. Yes, skiing.

It was a beautiful day and the snow was great.

We were skiing above Moraine Lake. It is starting to thaw. The blue of the water was a brilliant turquoise.

Also blue, my get up. My take on matching is to make sure I am wearing all of the same color. Usually blue.

When I got home, I designed and built a sail scooter…

and a morse code machine that worked!

On Sunday, we went rock climbing at Smith Rock with Riley and Dallas. It was awesome.