Alaska, Mexico, and everywhere in between.: Bend, OR

The Biking Crew: The Ahmuty's, Culbecks, Lorin, Keanu, Owen and Liam

Cool man-made pour over in the Deschutes River

A couple days ago we rolled in to Bend, Oregon at seven o’clock at night and everybody was tired. My parents friend Lorin had a friend who is out of town and Lorin took us to his house. It’s huge, it has two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a huge living/dining room, two decks, a parking garage, a huge mudroom, and last but not least an amazing view of the Deschutes River! The next morning my dad and I went on a cool walk down a trail next to the river. On the way back we saw a park ranger person with a paintball gun for scaring the geese off the path and into the water. Our first drive was from Seattle to Bend and we took about six hours. We stopped at Trader Joe’s along the way and got sushi, smoked gouda, and sea salt caramel chocolates! When we got closer to Bend we stopped at Trillium Lake and Dad got us lost with his “incredible” navigational skills! We hung out with Zoey and Kali, our friends that moved away in first grade. After that Dad, Lorin, Lorin’s son Keanu and I went mountain biking.

We’ve been on a couple more rides, We went on a 13.3 mile bike ride next to the Deschutes River and through the lodgepole pines and lava rock. Yesterday we went on a really cool ride up in the mountains around Smith Rock. We took a van all the way up to the beginning of the trail. When we got to the bike trail the hikers and the bikers split up. I went biking along with Griffin, my Dad, Julie, Lorin, Keanu, Zoey, Kali, Owen, Danny, Michael, Katie, Maryann, and Emma. In the beginning of the ride Julie, Keanu and I were in front but we took a wrong turn and went on a twenty minute detour straight up the mountain. After we got back on track we went down and across the mountain and caught up with everybody else. We all took a break and sat down and had food and water. We had picked an amazing spot to take a break, there was a really cool view of the desert and we were in between a couple of pine trees so the air smelled great. After that the trail turned into single track downhill trials riding. About a minute later we rode up on a bluff and bombed down into more trials riding with sharp turns and sketchy rock piles. We stopped when we came to a fork where you can either go through a fence or continue down on the rocks. We waited there for a couple minutes until everybody was with us, then we went through the gate and rode down to a dirt rode with a jump. All the kids hit the jump a couple of times and then we kept going down the single track that crossed the road. We rode for about forty-five minutes down a really cool fast single track until we got to the parking lot. When we got there we waited for the shuttle to pick us up. On the ride home we talked about how much fun we had.