Portland to Bend Road Trip

For two years i had to fly to Portland periodically as part of a treatment program for my tinnitus. It's over now, and although i am still tormented, the treatment was successful in reducing the loudness in my ears to somewhat tolerable levels much of the time. Many things can cause it to increase in loudness for a period ranging from hours to weeks, depending on the irritant. Surgery, or maybe the anaesthesia coupled with Vicodin, is so far the worst culprit to deal with, causing the tinnitus to increase to near pre-treatment levels for 8 weeks. Simple of lack of sleep can have a profound effect as well, but is the easiest to correct for.

Portland has a ridiculous number of bridges.

The second to last time i had to go to Portland was this past September. Oddly that's the only time i have been during the summer, and it was acompletely different experience. It was during a heat wave, in fact, and was close to 90 degrees. I brought Maree this time and we planned on making a mini-vacation out of the trip. We flew to Seattle, stayed for a day, drove to Portland, stayed for a day, and then drove to Bend. I had never visited Bend, or Eastern Oregon at all. I was looking forward to doing some hiking around the Three Sisters.

This is a Chinese gardens, but they could probably make it into a bridge if they wanted.

While in Portland I saw a show, saw some dogs, and did some touristy stuff like stare at the ceiling while in line at in Voodoo Donuts. If you ever saw the Portlandia where all they do is wait in line for a table at the newest breakfast restaurant, then i can assure you everything that happened in that episode was accurate.

If you take the road out of town that has the fewest bridges, you may end up at Mt. Hood. I was really surprised at how barren Mt. Hood looked. This was the view from a really cool, small hotel called Timberline Lodge. Parts of the lodge look like a Middle Earth castle.

 Looking west at the Three Sisters from on top of a cinder cone in the middle of Bend.

Yer not gonna believe it but therz a bunch 'o bridges outside a Bend.

 This one's a railroad bridge. They have a lot of those in Portland too
(along with unmanned robot trains). There's nothing down there but dead dogs. And a washing machine.

 I was never able to figure out why so many dogs have come to this area to commit suicide.

The dogs might have killed themselves after referring to this map, which bears so little resemblance to reality that you end up feeling completely lost in an area the size of a 711 parking lot. Looks like a map for an old Super Nintendo game.

The drive from Portland to Bend is pretty boring, under built, and overcrowded. It appears to be a major trucking corridor but virtually the whole drive is two lanes with few passing opportunities. In other words, it takes a long time to get there.

A huge area of forest near Bend was on fire. The smoke was worst over the mountains, so that ruined my Three Sisters hiking plans. One night the smoke blew into town causing a blood red sun well before sunset. At that point the smoke was so thick it was unpleasant to walk around outside. So we had to find other ways to spend out time, and i didn't bother taking many pictures of smokey landscapes.

Downtown Bend has a very nice city park by the river and a pleasant small town feel to it.

I had never seen this before. A literal "biker bar". You get drunk while burning off the calories pedaling the whole bar around town.

We were in Bend for 4 days, and although it was smokey and hot we still managed to do some fun stuff in the area, which i'll get too in the next two posts.

I never have put a picture of Snoqualmie Falls up here, so i figured i should throw that in, since we started the trip from there. In winter when it rains a lot the river is huge, covering the entire cliff and rendering itself invisible in mist.