WERE WE IN BEND??

Bend is beautiful this time of year. We had planned to enjoy way more of it than we did...

Bend is way bigger than I thought, upwards of 75,000 - big enough to have a Costco (no Trader Joe's, though). Lots of car dealerships, too, which stole the leisure time we would normally have used to explore the interesting downtown area of Bend.

Instead, since we have decided that we need to replace the Jeep (when we find the right replacement vehicle), we ended up spending a lot of time test driving used vehicles (a Honda Element and a Honda CR-v) and researching their suitability as a dinghy.

As always, our first priority each day is to get our 10,000 steps, and we DID see beautiful sights on our walks. This is the Deschutes River where it passes through the northern part of Bend, not far from the Elks Lodge where we stayed.

Today we are leaving to head east. Our first stop will be near the town on John Day, which looks, on the map, like the middle of nowhere. We'll see!