Oregon Part 6: Fly Fishing, Lakes, Mountains

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We had one scheduled event today: A Fly Fishing class at Bend's Orvis store. We found this free 2-hour class via a Facebook post from Visit Bend. There were 10 students with varying ages and degree of fishing skills. One guy has been fly fishing for 50 years. Dave's never taken a fish off a hook. Sing with us: "One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong". Trey, our instructor, gave a decent overview of equipment, casting, how fly line differs from regular fishing line, etc. after over an hour of class room time we went out to the lawn and practiced casting. This was fun...especially when a local cat chased after the instructor's line. We casted for about 25 minutes then headed back in. There were 3 more topics left and only 15 scheduled minutes- this was going into overtime. At that point we decided to cut bait and said our good byes. This was a great intro to a world we knew nothing about and on our next trip into nature we may look for a 1/2 day fly fishing excursion.

We knew we wanted to drive by Mount Bachelor but we weren't sure of the best route or if there was anything else in that area. We stumbled upon the Central Oregon Tourist Office and got some maps and advice. The lady suggested we go to Elk Lake Resort and have lunch. We really wanted food from 10 Barrel, but what the heck.....

There's one road to Mount Bachelor from Bend and it was full of slow moving trucks and under construction. Great......Finally we made it close to Mount Bachelor and some other mountains. We kept on going and hit the north-end of the lake district. It was similar to the Chain o' Lakes area we live in, except there were no homes or towns, the water was clean, and it was pretty.

Lunch at Elk Mountain Resort was basic (and by resort we're talking 18 cabins and campgrounds) but offered a quiet setting to enjoy some great views. After lunch we headed back to Sunriver on some fun mountain roads. One 4 mile stretch of the trip was on a gravel logging road. Hertz must have had fun washing that car.





the rest of the day Was spent at the pool, hot tub, dinner at Sunriver Brewhouse, and then The Owl's Nest.

The next morning was departure day. We had to get up early for the almost 4 hour drive to Portland. For the return trip we took Route 2 on this map through portions of the high desert and the Mount Hood National Forest. The desert portion of the drive was different, we never expected this kind of landscape in Oregon. We drove by rocky formations and over canyons you'd expect to see in New Mexico. There weren't many places to pull over for photos and by the time we found places you couldn't see through the thick forest fire smoke. Oh well.

As we drove onward we were treated to a fairly constant view of Mount Hood. The spot we chose to pull over for a picture was pretty lackluster, but at least we got one.

Just when we thought we had visited our last brewery.....Rogue and Laurelwood had locations in our terminal. Both locations featured nice malty beers. Perfect last impressions of Oregon.