We continued on to Bend Oregon and ate at the XXX brewery, and got a six pack sampler of their brews. Good food – everything is overpriced, as I suppose is to be expected from such a hip little city. The downtown area was bustling with tourists browsing through the chic little shops and eateries. Very cool little town – beautiful buildings, nice roads, green spaces, bike trails – things were well kept, clean and orderly, and parking was free and easy.
We took the scenic route North out of Bend through several National Forests and bypassed many cool looking free places to camp, and as it was getting late, we settled on a National Forest Campground at the Southern end of Santiam Lake. The lake has an algae bloom, and the campground was run by some independent concessionaire, and just didn’t have the clean and kept appearance most government run campgrounds do. It probably wasn’t the best choice, but we were wanting to check out the Breitenbush Hot Springs in the morning, and it was nearby.
We set up the extra bed in the Travato and watched Tangled..
We had found out that in addition to the privately owned “retreat”, there were also some free Hot Springs on the National Forest, so we drove up early in the morning. We found an older man and a young Asian woman milling around their Van and Trailer (a large box utility trailer with all sorts of home rigged camping apparatus’ hanging off of it), and stopped and asked them if they new where the Springs were. The trail took off from that same location (just a bit south of the private enterprise which was gated till 9:00). We put on our swimming clothes and headed down the trail for a warm bath. On the way, there were signs posted warning of a Cougar sighting in the last few days. The Cougar had “displayed aggressive behavior” and had been visiting hikers and campgrounds.. The spring turned out to be a nasty collection of long neglected square cement pools with a spider web of old plastic hoses running from one pool to the other. The pools and tubs were full of dirt and grime, and though someone had been attempting to scrub them with small toilet brushes – we were not obliged to “soak”. We walked back disappointed and headed back to the commercial enterprise to find out they were booked a month in advance. It was some sort of new age “retreat center” where they gave talks on spirituality and woman goddesses and awakening your inner you and all that sort of stuff.
We continued on to Sublimity, OR and did a 5+ mile hike around the 10 Falls Trail at Silver Falls State Park. Nice walk, great trail, beautiful falls, a little tiring, and even more so listening to Aly complain for the last two thirds of it.
