Birthday in Bend, OR

For Will's 32nd birthday we went to Bend, Oregon for a long weekend.  We went last year for his birthday, too :)  It's such an awesome place - good climbing, mountain biking, great beer and food!  We stayed at the same place as last time, McMenamins - Old St. Francis School http://www.mcmenamins.com/OldStFrancis. The hotel is a cool and quirky place that used to be an old Catholic school.  There's a pub with home-made beer, a theater, cigar bar with fire pits, and a soaking tub with muraled walls and a skylight open to the outside air. This year we spent the first day with a guide we had on our trip on the Haute Route, or as I like to refer to it, "Snowpocalipse 2013"http://melaniemeidson.blogspot.com/2013/04/haute-routeverbier-arolla-and-beyond.html.  Pete Keane owns Timberline Mountain Guides http://timberlinemtguides.com/ and has been climbing at Smith Rock a long time.  We hooked up with him for a day to give us our first intro to trad climbing class.  He brought his rack of gear and taught us the basics about how to climb routes placing your own pro.  He top-roped the routes for us and then we lead them using his rack, learning how to place cams and nuts in just the right spots up the huge rock walls.  It was an awesome day, perfect weather, and such a cool day of climbing.  I'm excited about getting our own trad gear and starting to practice placing it so soon we can lead our own routes.  If you're ever in need of a mountain guide, check out Pete's company -- he does everything from ski mountaineering, rock climbing, to international trips and he's a really cool guy.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped by Crux Fermentation Project http://cruxfermentation.com/, one of the newer breweries in town, for a pint. It was not our favorite pub of the weekend but had a good atmosphere and a phenomenal view out the front door. After cleaning up, we headed out to Deschutes http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/locations/bend for dinner.

We spent our second day mountain biking at Phil's Trails.  I lasted about an hour and a half until it started snowing/raining on us and my feet got cold.  Will kept riding for a while and I sat in the car getting toasty.  He rode the "Whoops" trail, which was his favorite part of the weekend he said.  I gave him a bump up the trail head again so he could ride it twice.  He busted through the woods to the car with mud all over his face and bike with a huge smile.  We headed lunch after that and had amazing burritos and beer :)

To relax ourselves before dinner, I booked us massages at a little place in downtown.  It felt so great to have a warm and relaxing massage after two hard days of playing outside.  For dinner that night we went to Jackson's Corner http://www.jacksonscornerbendor.com/, or as locals refer to it, 'The Corner' for pizza.  It's such a neat little place with a cozy back corner where we played checkers, drank and ate. For dessert I had mini pumpkin pie with a caramelized praline topping and vanilla ice cream... YUM!  After a nice long dinner we went back to our hotel to hang out by the fire before turning in.

On the last day in Bend we slept in, drank coffee in bed while reading comics then rolled by the local coffee shop to get us ready for our 6 hour drive home.  Such a great weekend.  Visit bend if you haven't already, trust me.