Today the kids got done with school early, so we explored a bit, went downtown to Pilot Butte, Deschutes Brewery, and dinner.
The morning was easy, good attitudes, they got their work done quick and knocked it off, so we were all done right after lunch time. The plan was to finish lunch, finish school, clean up and go to Pilot Butte. And it could not have gone better. We were by Pilot Butte around 3pm.
Pilot Butte was fun, the access roads were closed, so we could not drive up there and had to take the long way, which was walking up, but it was fun.
Pilot Butte is like a mountain with a platform right in the middle of town.
From there, you get 360 views of Bend, you can see all the different mountains that surround the area, and spot many points of interest. When we got there, Bella had to pee, and we made cover for her with a blanket we had in the truck, but she could not do it, and changed her mind when I said there was a restroom up there. This also helped make sure there was enough incentive to get up there without much complaining hahahahah…
We walked up, taking our time, enjoying the views, and trying to get the girls busy and talking, so they would not make much out of the fact we were going uphill for like 30 minutes :).
Views were amazing as we went up, mountains with snow caps far away, and a city that seems to be in the middle of a forest. Very cool. Once we got up there, there was a bathroom, full of flies, and many stuck to those yellow tapes, but the girls didn’t have much choice this time so I stayed there and helped them. Views were amazing from up there.
Bia was using the binoculars and trying to spot and name the mountains.
Bella was busy finding stones and looking at them with the iPhone magnifying app. Carol was reading all the signs and learning about the area.
It was a very cool stop, and good hike up there. We enjoyed there for about 20-30 minutes, and started our way down. Bia and Carol were playing together and started walking faster, running, etc. They were having fun. Bella was not moving too fast, so we stayed behind.
Going down hill pushes your feet towards the front of your shoes, so she started complaining that her pinkies were hurting. I tied her boots a little tighter around her ankles to see if it’d hold better and that seemed to have helped. We took our time, chatted, and made our way down. It was a good time, good workout too.
From there we went to the Deschutes Brewery Tasting room. Their tasting room has “free” tasters, so we had as many as we wanted, and I think I tried more than half of the beers on the board hahahahah….
We had 2 pints each of some beers we liked, girls had Sprite, and were playing in their electronics while Carol and I enjoyed the beers and chatted. We decided we should try the local food, and Carol found a pizza place downtown, so we went there.
The downtown area we went to was very cool, super pretty. The restaurant was called FlatBreat.
Their pizza was pretty good, they had local beers, service was good, and again the area was very nice. I really like Bend so far. We had a really nice dinner, lots of laughs.
And that was it, we left, went back to our “home”, cleaned up, got ready for bed and called it a day. Low key, very enjoyable day.