Deschutes River

Central Oregon is where I spent my week-end. Because it was our 7-year old grandson's birthday and because this is an alternate year for his birthday (his family has friend-parties alternating with family-years), he wanted us all to be together. Is that neat or what? So we rented a house for their family, our son's, and us that we have rented before in Sunriver, south of Bend, and the ten of us met for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It was as always a great time with good food, interesting conversations, fun with kids, but also nice to be in the land of tall pines, sagebrush, juniper, and snow capped mountains. Sunriver has resorts, homes, and every kind of recreation you can imagine with biking paths, stables for renting horses, swimming pools, small shops, restaurants, playgrounds, tennis courts, and the kind of scenery that is enough all by itself.

On Saturday we took two canoes on a mile or so of the Deschutes River. This was my first time on a river in a canoe. The river had some snags to watch for, but for a newbie, it was good that the current was limited. There were redwing blackbirds, osprey, various wildflowers, but the only flowers that ended up (mostly) in focus was Indian Paintbrush.

We had our granddaughter in our canoe which had the added benefit of her experience of being in canoes since before she was born. Well she won't remember that far back, but she was. She was informative and helpful even reminded me that bickering doesn't help and that the person in back is the boss-- not that I thought I was bickering (not at all). We finished off our little trip at a restaurant right on the river where it's easy to take the canoe out. Now this is my kind of roughing it!

Until I was confident of how it'd be with a little bit of current, I didn't take the camera from its waterproof bag. These pictures are from about halfway.