We love traveling from the San Francisco Bay Area to Central Oregon. The sky is usually crystal clear when traveling through Redding to Shasta Lake, and on to Weed. Not this time.
Fires were ravaging the region and even threatened Redding! The residents demonstrated their appreciation to first responders on every overpass, and thanked them for “Kickin’ Ash”. I’m also very grateful for their serivce!
We arrived in Sisters Oregon the next day.
I have to say that the Sisters/Bend RV Resort is the most beautiful and well groomed RV resort we have spent time at.
Our site was ginormous, and Lucy loved having a bog back yard!
A thousand miles of bugs to wash off!
We visited an amazing place called Smith Rock State Park, only about 40 miles away.
If you love rock climbing and hiking, you will enjoy it here. We visited here as group in the afternoon heat and immediately decided to come back early in the morning and hike the Misery Ridge trail, a challenging 4 mile loop, but much easier in the cool of the morning.
5:30 AM the next morning:
From the parking lot, you descend to the river and then almost straight up over Smith Rock.
It’s only 4 miles, but it makes you work for it! The hike is made easier by the beautiful scenery along the way. Every turn in the trail is another photo opportunity. 🙂
Once on the ridge, we got a great view of the sun rising over the mountains.
You then descend on the other side of the mountain and walk along the river back to the beginning.
This famous rock is called ‘Monkey Face”.
OK, which is the monkey face? 🙂
As you walk along the river, the rocks on the other side are literally crawling with climbers. It looks like fun…hmm, maybe the next time we are here.
I definitely want to visit Smith Rock again!
The next day, however, we decided to go kayaking on the Dechutes River in Bend. We love how you can kayak “downtown”.
All too soon it was time to head home!
Al & Deb
p.s. Lucy with attitude. 🙂
MobileMosers.com 
Looks like a fun trip despite the smoke! In seattle we were stuck inside for days, it was terrible (getting smoke from a big fire in Canada too).
Looks like an amazing hike and four miles sounds perfect. A challenge but doable without a lot of fuss.
And kayaking is always awesome 👍
It was good to do hiking one day and kayaking the next. The legs got a workout, then the upper body.
I think the whole western US was covered in smoke this year! I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this bad. Glad fire season is over!
Yeah it was bad! I’m glad it’s over too and am probably going to buy an a/c unit for next summer if there’s a smokey week again.
Soon you’ll stay in Bend as long as you like!
Soon! :-))