Portland to Redmond, OR

All Good things…

As we began our adventure, we are slowly heading back to Nashville. All good things must come to an end. It was sad for all of us to leave Portland. We really enjoyed our time there and look forward to coming back again someday. The weather was perfect, the driver courtesy to other drivers and to pedestrians was something I have not seen held to such high standards in any city or country I have been to. The food was good, the city itself was beautiful. So we began our adventure to Redmond, OR.

Detroit Lake, OR

We stopped to eat lunch at a beautiful spot on a lake. The sky couldn’t have been more blue with white fluffy clouds. I had to take some pictures and got some great pictures of the rest of the family. The best pictures I got of the area have the rest of the family in them, so these don’t do the area justice.

It was cool enough to have jackets on. We ate lunch at the edge of the woods and watched several squirrels eagerly await us to drop any food they could grab. There were a handful of boats at the lake, but we were the only group of people there without a boat.

Here is a panoramic that I tried to capture the beaute of the area with.

Sisters, OR

On the way to Redmond, we had a pretty drive over the mountains. Some of the views of the mountains were beautiful. Check it out!

Along the drive we stopped in Sisters, OR for lunch and to see the town. It was a really cute town. We did some window shopping and went into a couple of stores to check out the local wares. Gifts were cheaper here than anywhere else along our trip. The town was set with a backdrop of mountains as you can see in the

After we stopped in Sisters, the landscape started to change dramatically. From this lush mountain rainforest, suddenly, we were in a desert with sand and tumbleweed. Very strange. We drop through Bend on our way to our place for the next few nights. It felt like we were in a town in the southwest.

When we got to our place in Redmond, the kids had been in the car for a bit, so we unpacked and I took them across the street to a playground. There, our kids started getting along with another family that was playing soccer and was playing on the playground equipment. I started a conversation with the father, who was really friendly, and found out that his family was friends with the family that owned the house we were staying in for the evening.

One of the strange things about the place was the hosts had two tiny houses. One was build with a family living in it beside the house. Another was almost complete behind the house.

Speaking of the house, we had the whole upstairs of a house with two bedrooms, a full kitchen, dining room, living room, and bathroom. Plus, we had a large deck that overlooked the whole neighborhood. All of the other houses in the neighborhood were lower than ours, so it was quite a view. After we ate dinner as a family and got the kids in bed, Jill and I relaxed and enjoyed life more like we are used to living at our own home. It felt like home and our hosts were leaving the following morning, so it was like it was ours.