We had a great time staying with Brian and Char up in Eagle, but after two weeks, we were ready to get back into the trailer (it’s our home, after all). We were also ready to get to some warmer weather – it was getting friccin’ cold in Idaho by this time of year! Unfortunately, there aren’t many warm areas up in that part of the country, so our options were limited. Ultimately, we opted to head for the coast and make our way south after that.
Getting to the coast in one drive was more than we were willing to bite off, so we decided to hit up Bend as it was a good halfway spot between the Boise metro and the Pacific. Also, we had heard such good things about the city, we figured that we had to check it out.
The journey to Bend was a long, uninteresting drive west along highway 20 through a series of sparsely populated agricultural communities. Once we were finally within Bend city limits, our final destination was the Crown Villa RV Resort located on the southern edge of town. This was a great little RV park. Although we would have loved to have access to their hot tub (closed due to COVID -_-), we had little to complain about otherwise. The property was beautiful, the employees were friendly, and the paved sites were huge with plenty of space between each unit. They even had a trash pickup service that ran multiple times each day!
We were attempting to escape the creeping hand of winter, but sadly, we were still within its clutches during our time in Bend. In fact, it snowed several times throughout the week and although we would have preferred sunny skies, the snow sure made for some pretty pictures of the rig and the surrounding campground!
Because the weather wasn’t quite ideal, we spent much of our time just hanging in the trailer watching movies/comedy specials, cooking sausage balls, and drinking mocktails since we had decided to participate in "Dry January" (double -_-).
When we did manage to get out of the park to do some exploring, we found fun activities to be few and far between given the time of year and COVID restrictions. As we have mentioned in previous posts, there is definitely a wide range of attitudes regarding restrictions depending on geography, and Bend was definitely more on the “scared of life” side of the spectrum. Fortunately, the benevolent overlords of the state and local governments were generous enough to allow plebian access to the city’s cool little central park, which we chose to take advantage of one evening.
Although we didn’t quite enjoy Bend as much as we thought that we would, we definitely recognize that we weren’t visiting at the ideal time. We will have to check out the area again when the weather is nicer, when COVID is a thing of the past, and when we aren’t doing Dry January, and therefore, are able to partake in the city’s vibrant brewery culture.
Tune in for the next installment of Putz’n Around where we detail our trip over the Cascade Mountains and down to Newport, Oregon – an idyllic West Coast beach town and one of our favorite stops along the journey thus far!