Bend/Sunriver-Family, Fun, Museums and Art

NOTE: I am revamping my website so any comments made after Sunday Aug 12 will be blocked.

I got to spend a week in the Bend/Sunriver area of Central Oregon with my family-such a treat! With grown men as sons, I don’t expect this to happen that often and it filled my Mommy heart.

It’s a 7 hour drive for us and it’s pretty tedious with about 3 hours of 2-lane roads.

It’s the very beginning of tomato season so I saw a few ‘mater trucks along the way. I don’t know why, but I find ‘mater trucks charming. If you are driving I-5 between LA and Sacramento in August you see the garlic, pepper and tomato trucks constantly. Seriously, I wish the farmers would label their crops though-I recognized melon, tomato, hay and various fruit and nut trees but some of the crops puzzled me. I need to know!

We stopped for breakfast at a diner in Corning and this was ONE biscuit with gravy and hash browns! The biscuit was about 6″ square and 4″ tall!

We stayed in Sunriver, mainly because it’s close to golfing for Hubby and sons. The landscape is almost entirely pines with native grasses, no fancy landscaping given the abundance of these guys.

We spent an entire day at The High Desert Museum in Bend-we could have spent even more time there. It is an excellent museum with a great variety of very well done exhibits.

Their raptor show is like no other. I’ve been to the one in Tucson which is also fabulous, just in a different way. What I liked about this one was that you had to sit on the ground, you could not get up (it would disturb the birds). As a result, you were very close to the birds and they literally flew close enough to move your hair. It was so cool to see them that close and feel them fly.

The museum had some things that were very “real” and they made no excuses for it. This guy is chomping on a song bird, right in front of us. Some of the little kids were disturbed by that but the naturalist handled it very well. I appreciated their approach.

This just gave me a chuckle.

And there was art there too, actually 3 separate exhibits.

Hadley Rampton, “Teton Gold”.

Valerie Winterholler, “Sustainable Bliss”.

Just one of many exquisite beaded pieces in the Indigenous Peoples exhibit.

Marie Watt, “Blanket Stories: Talking Stick, Works Progress, Steward”. The sculpture integrates blankets that were donated by people in the community. Each blanket has its owner’s story written on a tag.

I love, love, love this tag. This is good parenting.

Gotta get in a few pics of the family!

We rented double kayaks one day for a beautiful float down the Deschutes.

Gorgeous and bucolic.

There’s one in every crowd…oldest son holding the rear of the other kayak so that they would not be able to steer or move. It was pretty funny actually…

We returned to the rental to regroup before heading out to Bend. I LOVE this jumble of shoes. I have photos throughout family history of Shoe Jumbles. It warms my heart for some reason.

Oh did I find some great art in Bend!

There was a retrospective exhibit of 50 years of the work of Bill Hoppe. As luck would have it I caught him there and found him fascinating. This quote from the newspaper sums it up: “You’ll see a lot of rectangular shapes in my paintings — and, of course, the canvas is a rectangle itself. I am fascinated by how the rectangle is a space of seemingly infinite reflection and permutation”.

This huge piece was amazing:

I hope you can see the perspective here-I think it was 30′ or so and only about half was shown, the rest rolled up. His artist statement says he “establishes points at varying intervals on the edge of the rectangle, connecting the points with line to create a grid, and composing imagery with the resulting planes”. I love the juxtaposition of his vision with the arduous task of all those hand-drawn lines.

We also visited the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Our first stop was the Obsidian Flow. My photos are not going to do this area justice-it was incredibly stark, a massive flow of black obsidian (glass) and gray pumice.

It is other worldly.

It seems impossible that anything could live here but there were a few forlorn trees and some lichen. I didn’t see anything between the rocks but surely something lives in there. They say that in the spring a huge crop of frogs bursts forth and covers the area. I can’t imagine!

This is just one example of the obsidian. This one was about 2′ across and those edges are razor sharp. Did you know that they actually make some surgical scalpels out of obsidian? A razor blade is 10 times thicker than an obsidian blade! Cuts made with obsidian heal quickly and with much less scarring. Who knew?

Contained within the park are 2 gorgeous lakes, this being a view of Paulina. It was so quiet and beautiful.

Nearby were two 80′ twin waterfalls, Paulina Falls. See that idiot in red? He and his companion jumped the fence, scrambled on the rocks and did lots of other really stupid and dangerous things. We called 911. Hope they got them. It was destructive and dangerous. But look at the falls!

Beneath the falls are a series of mini-falls. Love this scene with the rushing water and those pretty pink bloomers.

It was a car trip after all, so I toted along my 765 BERNINA, my Sew-Ezi table and all the normal accoutrements that you would need to piece. This is my “studio” for the week and it served me well! I don’t know why but it is such a kick for me to sew while on vacation.

I completed  this Handwork Pillow by Legacy Patterns and I love it! It’s very lightweight and sits on your lap, raising your handwork to a more comfortable height.

I was in the mood for some piecing, something I rarely do. I had the Feathers pattern by The Pattern Basket in my stash for awhile and it was time to get it out and play. It is so adorable! I completed 6 blocks before I left and I am super confident that this quilt will be completed within 5 years:-/

Ah, it felt so good to vacation! The last 2 years were a jumble of a remodel, a wedding, 2 moves, a book written and lots more. I really needed a vacation. I’ll link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday-I hope you make it a habit to cruise the links!