Travel Guide: Bend, Oregon

I’m excited to announce the launch of our Travel Guide series, where we’ll be sharing city guides and cool places around the United States and world. We’re kicking off with a travel guide to Bend, Oregon. Dan and I flew out to Bend for a wedding in 2017, and we added a few days to the end of our trip to explore the surrounding area. We were so glad that we extended our stay because there are so many beautiful places to see in Central Oregon. Here’s what we did in Bend, plus our favorite restaurants and breweries…

We kicked off our trip with an exciting morning and booked the Big Eddy Thriller, a 3-mile long white water rafting trip on the Deschutes River, with Sun Country Tours. The Class III rapids and photos of everyone freaking out were the highlights. During the calmer sections on the river, we saw two osprey nests and volcanic rock features lining the river bank. If you’re up for white water rafting, we’d definitely recommend Sun Country Tours — they were great!

To calm our nerves after rafting, we set out on a casual Bend Brewery Hop, and with 23(!) breweries in Bend, many of which are within walking distance of each other, there wasn’t a shortage of options. We stopped at Goodlife, 10 Barrel, and Crux Fermentation Project (pictured above).

Crux has an especially fun outdoor space with lawn games, live music, delicious food from local food trucks, and a stunning panoramic view of the Cascade Mountains. We loved the tacos from El Sancho and the Hawaiian-style shaved ice from Dakine Grindz.

We spent a chill afternoon in Drake Park, which was right across the street from our Airbnb. For most of the week, the park was full of people picnicking, swimming, paddle boarding, and strolling along the river paths. The most popular thing to do, though, was to pack a cooler, rent a tube, and float down the lazy river all day.

On a clear day, a short hike or drive up to Pilot Butte — an extinct volcano!— reveals sweeping 360-degree views of Central Oregon. Sadly, many forest fires (16, to be exact) were burning nearby during our time in Oregon, which limited the view on Pilot Butte. Actually, the foggy ‘filter’ on all of these pictures is from the smoke-filled air. Even with the smoke, we hiked to the top of Pilot Butte twice during our stay and it was totally worth it.

Late one afternoon, we drove about 15 minutes outside of town to Tumalo Falls. This 97-foot waterfall on Tumalo Creek is surrounded by hiking trails, and we followed one winding path up and around to two viewing points. From the viewing points, we were so close to the waterfall that we could feel the cold mist in the air. I highly recommend checking this spot out, especially since it’s so close to town.

Another thing to love about Bend is its convenient location to other Oregon attractions. It’s central to a number of The Seven Wonders of Oregon, which were announced in 2014 as part of Travel Oregon’s tourism campaign. The Seven Wonders are Crater Lake, Painted Hills, Smith Rock, Wallowas, Mount Hood, Columbia River Gorge, and the Oregon coast.

On our last full day in Oregon, we rented a car and headed east to the Painted Hills. The hills sort of pop up out of nowhere; a stretch of bleak road leads to a gravel driveway that, after a few minutes, opens up to this (mostly) untouched cluster of hills. It’s said the Painted Hills are like a peek into Earth’s history, each layer representing a different era. Even on a day when the smoke was pretty bad, the layers of colors — reds, yellows, grays, greens, even spots of black — were unlike anything we’d ever seen.

After the Painted Hills, we traveled west to Smith Rock. While our stop there was short, you could easily spend an entire day hiking, mountain biking, and rock climbing around this beautiful state park. We even saw a wedding in action — imagine Smith Rock being the backdrop for your wedding photos!

Crater Lake is also a doable day trip from Bend. With unhealthy air quality reports and low visibility, we decided to leave it for our next trip to Oregon, but everyone we spoke to said it’s completely breathtaking — the views and the water temperature.

We enjoyed a number of delicious meals in Bend. Our favorite was the Thai coconut curry (Khao Soi Curry) from Wild Rose — we had it twice! A few other culinary highlights included the Carnitas Sando at Spork, mint chocolate chip and orange creamsicle gelato at Bontà Natural Artisan Gelato, smoothies at Mother’s Downtown Kitchen, the brewery pretzel at Deschutes Brewery, and the Setenta Cinco, a lavender-flavored cocktail, at Barrio.

Thank you so much, Oregon! We can’t wait to go back.

Have you been to Bend? What else would you add to the list?

PS. A genius travel tip, plus more travel posts.

(White water rafting photos by Sun Country Tours during our Big Eddy Thriller tour. A version of Travel Guide: Bend, Oregon appeared on The Spot Journal. It has been edited and updated for Happily K.)