Our Little Hike

Skip loves to explore caves, so while vacationing in Bend I agreed to take a nice hike in the desert through central Oregon to find some cave that he had seen on a map. Needless to say, we didn't find the cave...so on our hike back to the car I took two pictures. The first one shows what was behind us, the second one shows what was ahead of us. Thank goodness I lathered up on the sunscreen!

Mirror Pond isn't just a beer!

Skip's favorite beer is Mirror Pond, so one of our first stops in Bend was the Deschutes Brewery Pubhouse for a fresh, cold beer! But before that we took a walk through Drake Park, just west of downtown Bend. That is where we found Mirror Pond, a spot along the Deschutes River that was full of geese, ducks, and one white swan. The park was beautiful and was one of our fave spots in Bend.

Here's the queen (or king) of Mirror Pond.

This guy kept giving me the evil eye, so I had my escape plan ready to go!

We ended our trip to the park with a game of Duck, Duck, Goose!

Bend Pics....Finally

Sunset atop Pilot Butte with Bend below. The Three Sisters are the mountains to the left of the sun, with Broken Top on the far left.

Looking up the side of Lava Butte, which spewed out all of this black lava into the valley.

On the top of Lava Butte, can you tell how mature we are??? The view from up here was amazing! We learned that all these butte's are vent holes from the volcanoes, and there are more than 400 in this area.

Almost Free!

I don't know who this girl is, but she conveys my feelings right now perfectly! Excited, ecstatic, and just plain happy that summer vacation is starting so soon! One more half-day and it's adios!

I'm also happy because Skip and I are celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary. We'll cross paths in between our jobs, but we're going to Bend this weekend to celebrate!