weekend adventures 70

Over the weekend our friends Rory and Alena came to visit and we did a ton of running around, including another trip to Smith Rock for our second attempt at the Misery Ridge trail. It was really good to see our friends, but I did sort of feel like I needed a little weekend from my weekend afterwards. 

friday
Since it was Spring Break the two of them got in to town early, so when I got home from work we headed straight to Worthy Brewing for some dinner and drinks. After dinner we came back home and stayed up way too late catching up.

saturday
We had originally made plans to get up and head to Smith Rock in the morning, something that I was definitely dreading when I woke up, but we decided to go for it despite being so tired. First we headed in to Redmond for breakfast at Black Bear Diner and then out to Terrebonne. By the way, Black Bear has some pretty amazing blueberry pancakes!

[[ breakfast at black bear diner. ]]

Once again I took a bunch of shots at Smith Rock that I will get around to posting later, but in the meantime I got some pretty entertaining ones from my phone. Let's just say Pat and Rory are pretty good at freeze frame jump shots. Once we finished up we stopped at The Depot, which is a little restaurant in an old train station close by. We grabbed some snacks, which were delicious, and then headed home to relax for a few hours before getting ready for dinner.

[[ posing for pictures at smith rock. our failed jump shots. rory & pats successful ones. the depot. ]]

We decided to take them out to Crux for dinner which at this point is probably our favorite brewery in town. Me and Alena also snuck in to Safeway to grab Rory some birthday paraphernalia since his was the next week. We ended up with cupcakes, balloons (one which read "it's a boy!") and a Justin Beiber card. You know, the usual.

[[ crux. early birthday presents for rory. ]]

sunday
In the morning we headed back in to Bend to try a new restaurant called Jackson's Corner that a coworker told me about. It was delicious. They had the best mimosa I have probably ever had with fresh squeezed orange juice. Since it was closer to lunch time me and Alena split a turkey sandwich and Pat got a tuna salad. Everything was really fresh and tasty, we will definitely be back.

[[ jacksons corner. ]]

After lunch we headed in to Old Mill and ended up stopping in to Level 2, a little martini bar above some of the shops. They have some really interesting libations and a really good happy hour appetizer menu. I want to come check this place out again some time for dinner. Once we shared a few drinks and some mussels, we drove back home, Rory and Alena headed back to the valley, and me and Pat enjoyed the rest of our Sunday.

[[ level 2. ]]

weekend adventures 69

We didn't have any plans for the weekend, but we ended up doing quite a bit of exploring regardless, including two more stops on the Bend Ale Trail.

friday
After work me and Pat decided to head out to Sisters to try the "extra credit" brewery on our Bend Ale Trail checklist, Three Creeks. They are pretty much in the Five Pine Lodge parking lot, which I thought was a bit unusual since Five Pine appears to be a nice and secluded wedding venue online, but I digress. The place was pretty packed when we got in, but we managed to score a table pretty quick and ordered some drinks. Pat got a special Irish Stout (since St. Patty's Day was Sunday), and I got a sampler tray since I had never had any of their stuff before. There were several that I thought were pretty good, and the food wasn't too bad either. If you live anywhere in Central Oregon you know that their beers can also be found at the store, and I have to hand it to them, I really like their branding. It does not seem like something that would come out of little old Sisters. Unfortunately we forgot to get our "passports" stamped, so we will definitely be back again.

[[ three creeks. ]]

saturday
We decided to go in to Bend, to get some shopping done, and then grab some drinks at Good Life, the brewery we had started at when we first attempted the Ale Trail with my friend Sierra. There is a little tasting room for Volcano Vineyards right next door, so we took a little detour inside to see what they had to offer. It was a pretty sweet little place with some really interesting chandeliers and pretty yummy wine. I particularly enjoyed their take on peach sangria which was poured out of a tap. Me and Pat ended up buying a growler of it for later and then making our way over to Good Life for some food. They have some delicious snacks, like bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers, and the best beer pretzel we have found so far in town (and we have tried a ton of them). We ended up grabbing a few beers and sticking around for dinner before making our way home to enjoy some of our sangria and watch movies.

[[ koalas march, one of my treats from shopping at world market. ]]

[[ volcano vineyards. ]]

[[ good life brewing co. ]]

sunday
In honor of St. Patty's Day Pat made us a delicious bangers and mash inspired breakfast while we blasted some Drop Kick Murphey's and Flogging Molly. Since the last stop on our Ale Trail was McMenamins Old St. Francis School downtown, we decided to go there for the rest of the evening, so we put on our green and headed in to Bend once again. Me and Pat were both so used to being in a college town where everyone goes crazy on any holiday that involves drinking, that we were really surprised not that many people were in to it here. In fact, other than the small bar inside of the school, there were not many festivities to be had, so after lunch at the restaurant, we called it a night early and decided to head back home to enjoy the rest of our lazy Sunday. Hopefully we have a little better luck finding something festive to engage in next year... come on Bend, you can do better than little old Corvallis.

[[ bangers and mash breakfast. ]]

[[ a st. patty's day beer. ]] 

weekend adventures 68

Last weekend me and Pat headed to Portland for my friend Colleen's annual costume birthday party. I had such a great weekend, even if there was a lot of commuting and I only got to see my friends for one night. It is a bummer that we don't get to see each other all the time like we did when we were in college, me especially since I live the farthest away, but every time we get back together its like old times. Love you guys.


saturday
We wanted to get a fairly early start, so we packed up in the morning, got ready, and headed over the Hood Pass towards Portland. It was a gorgeous day and the scenery was beautiful, so I didn't mind the three hour drive over. Pat had made plans to meet up with some friends, and I had some errands to run at the mall, so he dropped me off with my friend Megan and took care of his business while I took care of mine.

[[ weather changes heading over the hood pass for portland. ]]

When we were finished shopping Megan took me over to my friend Tiff's place, and we started getting ready for the party. I had to go through this pretty intense process to get my hair "short" like Bonnie Parker's hair was, and added some fingerwaves as well, which took forever. (I will dedicate an entire post to this with a how to later). The rest was easy, minimal makeup, red lips, dress, gun, good to go. Of course all Pat had to do was get dressed and he was ready, I didn't even have to buy him anything new for this costume aside from the gun!

Megan came over before we left so me, Pat, Tiff, Megan, and Jason rode over to Colleens together and partied for the rest of the night. I will post party pictures separately because as usual, I have a ton of them. There were a bunch of really good costumes! Everyone is so creative! Here are a few little teasers...

[[ historical figures party: preview group shots. ]]

sunday
I wanted to meet up with my dad while I was in town, so in the morning me and Pat packed back up and met him, my step mom, and littlest sister at The Thirsty Lion in Tigard, which has surprisingly really good food. It was good to visit with them for a few hours before heading home. The rest of the day was spent going back over the pass, and then relaxing for the rest of the night. It was a really really quick trip, but definitely worth it.

weekend adventures 67

Last weekend Megan came to visit me despite my sickness, and although I started to feel not so great again on Sunday, we had a pretty good Saturday, and I was definitely thankful for the chance to get a girls weekend. 

friday
I was supposed to head downtown to celebrate my friend Sierra's birthday, but since I still wasn't feeling great I decided to stick around home instead. Megan got here around nine and we just talked and relaxed for the rest of the night, nothing too exciting, but with Pat being gone all week, I definitely appreciated the company.

saturday
We got up in the morning and sat outside for a little while since it was so nice out. I got in the hottub for a little bit and then we made a quick breakfast and headed in to town. I had to go to TJ Maxx to get something for a costume I was working on (more on that later), so me and Megan messed around in there for a while.

[[ sunshine. breakfast. some pretty sweet finds at tj maxx. ]] 

Next we headed to Boneyard so that I could grab Pat a growler of his favorite beer and some other goodies to surprise him with when he came home. There was a brewery event going on all around Oregon called Zwinklefest, so we actually got to go back into the brewery and taste a few beers they normally don't have out as well. I felt bad Pat was missing out, but I figured that the beer, a tshirt, and a wrist band would make him feel better. When we were all done we headed to 10 Barrel to grab some lunch. The two of us shared a taster tray to try and refresh our memories on which beers were decent and came up with a few winners. I am not a huge fan of their beer but the food their is great.

[[ enjoying ourselves at boneyard while picking up some presents for pat. lunch at 10 barrel. ]]

Megan had wanted to check out a little boutique downtown and go to Goodies to get some chocolate, so we headed over there next and then made our way to a cute little bar I was introduced to the weekend before called Velvet. It reminds me a little bit of The Doug Fir in Portland, but much smaller, and they have some pretty unique drinks there. I got one with Yerba Mate and vodka that was delicious. We had some time to kill so we lounged there for a while watching snowboarding videos downstairs, and then headed over to Old Mill to check out the Bend Winterfest.

[[ velvet. ]]

A band that me and Pat used to see in Corvallis called Stairway Denied was playing and I really wanted to see them, so we braved the cold. They are a Led Zeppelin cover band that actually plays like them, violin bow, "Moby Dick" solo and all. Of course they were great as always even though they played a pretty short set. After them an all female ACDC cover band came on and I really wasn't in to it. The band itself was pretty good, but their lead singer kind of ruined it for me. We also ran in to Sierra and some of her friends, so we stuck around probably a little bit longer than we should have, but eventually surrendered to the cold and called it a night to avoid getting frostbitten toes. Megan had also been pelted with a can of some Dutch Brothers energy drink by the radio team running the show... yea, probably not a good idea to throw full cans into a crowd of people from two stories up... nice going. She pretty much saved both of our faces by raising her arm which ended up taking the full wrath. Sorry Megan, but thanks for looking out.

[[ stairway denied. bend winterfest. ]]

sunday
It was gorgeous and sunny on Sunday so we sat out on the deck for a couple of hours. Foolishly I thought I was hot and took off all of my layers which resulted in my flu coming back full force a few hours later... but it felt good for a while. We relaxed, painted our nails, went in to town to grab some food to make for dinner, cooked, and watched Ten Things I Hate About You, you know, girl stuff. After dinner Megan headed home and I pretty much went right to bed.

weekend adventures 66

Last weekend our friends Megan and Tony came for a visit, we climbed Smith Rock, explored Bend, baked a cake, and watched the Superbowl. It was really good to have some visitors and turned out to be a really fun and productive weekend. 


saturday
Our friends Tony and Megan got here pretty late on Friday, so we just had a few drinks, caught up and called it a night. Saturday morning when we got up Pat made us all breakfast, we packed our bags, and then headed out to Smith Rock. The trip was amazing, but super exhausting. We decided to hike straight up the rock on the aptly named "Misery Ridge" trail, down and around on an extremely steep, muddy, and slippery trail past Monkey Face (which is a rock), and around the entire thing. Our hike took several hours, and by the time we got back to the front we were completely exhausted, but still had to hike up the path to the parking lot, which was torture. It was all worth it though to see the panoramic views at a top. I took a ton of pictures, which I will be posting on their own in the future. No promisses for competing these by the end of the week though. In the meantime, here is a really small preview of some of the pictures I posted on Instagram throughout the day.

[[ me and pat at smith rock before the hike. monkey face on the steep trail down. ]]

saturday night
Once we finally made it to the car we were all starving and decided to go straight in to Redmond to grab some dinner and a celebratory margarita at Diego's. Dinner was extremely satisfying after all of that exercise, and we were really looking forward to enjoying the hot tub when we got home.

Since it had been Tony's birthday a few weeks prior, me and Megan decided to go to the store and get the supplies to make him a cake. We also decided to wrap those supplies up like a present and bought him a ridiculously cheesy card and a balloon as well, which he was very surprised to see. When we got home we made some greyhounds and got to work on the cake, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster and probably the ugliest cake either of us has ever been a part of making. Lets just say that baking at high altitudes is not something I am quite used to, and that microwaving frosting to soften it up is only a good idea if monitored correctly. Either way, we ended up with a perfectly edible confetti cake that everyone enjoyed a slice of. Success. After all of our hard work we finally made it in to the hot tub to massage our sore muscles and relax for the rest of the night.

[[ the ugly birthday cake we made for tony. ]]

sunday (superbowl)
Pat had made plans to watch the Superbowl at his dads place near Sunriver, so we headed in to Bend in the morning to run a few errands first. The four of us grabbed breakfast at a little cafe called Cafe Sintra which I thought was delicious. I had a substancial egg sandwich on fresh baked rosemary basil bread with avocado and tomato, some fresh fruit, and a mimosa to start off my day. Pat had a delicious looking Monte Cristo sandwich with potatoes and some fresh coffee, which also looked delicious. I really dug the atmosphere of this place, and will definitely be back again soon.

[[ breakfast at cafe sintra. ]]

After breakfast we ran to Boneyard to pick up some growlers for the game, and then went to Crux to do the same and have a beer. I love their Flemish Red, as I believe I have mentioned before. We ended up getting a growler of the Sugar Daddy from there, and brought a few growlers from Boneyard over to his Dads place.

[[ crux fermentation project. ]]

The game, was pretty terrible... and with the Ravens dominating the first half, no memorable commercials, which was disappointing, Beyonce doing whatever it is Beyonce does at half time, the power outage putting a stop to the game for half an hour, and the Niners almost coming back to win it at the end only to be thwarted by a holding penalty by the defense that was never called, it was definitely the oddest superbowl I have ever seen. Aside from being disappointed in the Niners loss, I was a little disappointed that there was no reenactment of the SNL sketch with Justin Timberlake when Beyonce sang "All The Single Ladies"... although, after the whole Janet Jackson controversy the NFL might not be too eager to welcome JT back on stage. Still, that would have made it all worth it.

After watching the game and eating lots of football game related foods, like hot dogs and chili, we called it a night and went home to sleep. Megan and Tony left bright and early this morning.

[[ me and megan on superbowl sunday. ]]

weekend adventures 65

Our second weekend in Central Oregon ended up being extremely beer-centric, starting out with a work event, and culminating with our first attempt at The Bend Ale Trail.


friday night
I had to go to a chamber dinner for work Friday evening, which was basically a bunch of local businesses getting together and awarding each other for various things, as well as raising awareness about their companies. Each of the tables at the event was decorated by a different local business, ours was a brewery called Phat Matt's, so we had lots of beers, chocolate, popcorn, and balloons. Some others I remember were a Mexican restaurant called Mazatlan, so that table had margaritas and a piñata, a fire station, so the table had fireman themed items such as legos and a Curious George book, and a gardening store, so that table had gloves and watering pails with flowers. At the end of the event, which was catered, we all got to divy up the swag at the table and take it home. I ended up with three beers and the balloons. Go to a work function... bring home a party... or at least thats what I told Pat when I walked in the door with beers and balloons in hand. Not too shabby.

[[ a few pictures from the chamber dinner: phat matt's. balloons. fire table. mazatlan table. ]]

saturday
Me and Pat took a stab at the Bend Ale Trail with my long lost friend Sierra who I had not seen since Freshman year of college down in Ashland, aside from running in to her briefly once in Newport a few years ago. We met up for some lunch, got started, and ended up spending the entire day together. I will get in to the specifics of The Ale Trail in another post or two starting tomorrow, but it was really really good catching up with Sierra, and I think I will be hanging out with her quite a bit now that we are over here.

[[ bend ale trail brochure. ]]

sunday
We had a few errands to run in the morning, which ended with Pat finally purchasing a Whirly Pop, which is an extremely ridiculous popcorn maker. He was seriously so excited to make some popcorn, such a nerd. However, the majority of the day was spent relaxing, which was much needed after all of that beer Saturday!

[[ pat making popcorn. ]]

weekend adventures 64 our first weekend in central oregon

Our first weekend in Central Oregon was amazing! We went on a little outdoor adventure, tried out a new local brewery, relaxed at home, had an amazing breakfast, did some shopping, and a little more unpacking. 


saturday (1/19)
Me and Pat decided that since we are over here we want to become a lot more active and do a lot more hiking and outdoorsy things, so Saturday morning we got up, ate some breakfast, packed up a day pack, and headed out into the woods to do some exploring.

We went to Tumalo State Park, which was really really beautiful. We "hiked" around along the river for a few miles, and then turned back because it was getting really icy, but we took a ton of pictures, which I will post on their own. We even passed some kayakers who were very friendly.

[[ tumalo state park. ]]

Once we got back to the main park we sat for a little while and enjoyed the sunshine before deciding to drive in to Bend to grab an early dinner and some beers. We went to a newer brewery called Crux Fermentation Project that my coworker told me about, and I feel in love with it! The food was good, the beer even better, and the atmosphere was amazing. I am really in to their version of a Flemish Red. After the sun went down and we shared a taster tray and ate some paninis we made our way home to relax for the rest of the night.

[[ crux fermentation project: menu. bar. taster treys. happy pat. happy me. flemish red. ]]

sunday (1/20)
In the morning we got up and headed back in to Bend to meet Pat's dad and step mom at The Victorian Cafe for breakfast. We had eaten there once before years ago, and I remembered it being delicious, but I had no idea it was that good! They literally have about twelve different varieties of eggs benedict to choose from, and amazing bloody mary's. Afterwards we hoped over to REI so that Pat could finally pick up a Camelback, and then headed out to his dads place for dinner, before heading home to have a lazy rest of our day.

[[ bloody mary. fire pit. eggs benedict. old mill. ]]

It was a great weekend. One of the best I have had in a long time.