ADVENTURES IN OUR AMERICAN DREAM travel blog

Jerry's 65th Birthday Steak at the Outback

The "Blooming Onion" :-)

A visit to the Old Mill District for the WinterFest Celebration

The Old Mill

It was in the 30's and snowing, the outside fires were most...

Jerry looking through the fish casting ring

Nice ice carving, we loved the huge Eagle

More carvings with a scary looking lady :-)

A cool turtle and more

Crossing over the Deschutes River

Old Mill District view from bridge

A new way to ski

We got some fantastic cinnamon nuts here

The biggest snowman I ever saw :-)

A huge fish ice carving

More carvings

A huge dragon

They had a lot of these set up

With everything you can think of for sale, even conehead hats :-)

Lots of warm shoes for the cold weather

A nice area just for kids

Snowflake tent for kids games etc.

Inside view

More big tents lined up with goodies for sale

They loaded 90 truck loads of snow in for this ski area

After the events were over, the kids enjoyed playing on the melting...

They had tons of food booths

A large variety of foods

Middle Eastern Booth

Curly Fries

They only had one size available, HUGE! :-)

This tent was set up with tables for eating

View of the ice carvings from the side

It looks like a huge bowl of soup but it was a...

The view from the other side of the bridge

Unusual, called "No Caulks Allowed"

Info

Another view

Walking back, there were a ton of restaurants and shops

Another view

This shop had snow scenes painted on the windows, cool!

A great place to shop

A beautiful pond

Another view

Last one!


Thanks a million to everyone who called or sent e-mails about Ollie's health. He is doing much better, eating like a horse and all the plumbing is working fine again. :-)

Yesterday we celebrated Jerry's 65th birthday. We had dinner at the Outback Steak House. His gift from me was a new metal detector. I know he will be having a ton of fun with that in the future. February is a very busy month for us. We celebrated our 44th Wedding Anniversary on the 6th, then Valentine's Day on the 14th, Jerry's Birthday on the 16th and today is our First Year Anniversary for traveling in our RV. It has been a superb year, the best one of our lives and we are looking forward to the second year. We have had a wonderful time in Bend and have visited a ton of places. We will be leaving Bend around March 2 and heading back to the Oregon Coast. We missed a lot of state parks we want to visit, then we are heading to California.

This week we visited the Old Mill District in Bend. This is the site of Bend's original lumber mills. The mills have all since closed down and the area has been renovated and replaced by The Shops at the Old Mill shopping area, the Les Schwab Amphitheater, movie theaters, commercial offices, hotels, and condos. The architectural design of the Old Mill buildings is reminiscent of the mill buildings, and the center piece of the area is the last original building from the old mill operations. The building has been completely restored and the trademark three smoke stacks can be seen from many vantage points around the city. This is a relatively new area and is still evolving, but the area is quickly becoming a popular alternative to Downtown.

The WinterFest is a three day event that features live music, the Snowflake Village Children’s area complete with activities and family friendly live performances, Cross Country Ski Races at the event center, The U.S. Cellular Rail Jam where spectators can witness awesome tricks by skiers and snowboarders, snowmobile and ski demos as well as shopping and dining in the heated Winter Marketplace tents. They had an awesome display of winter lights at the “Light The Night” walk in The Old Mill featuring ice carvings and snow sculptures. It was snowing the whole time we visited and the temperature was in the 30's. We loved walking in the snow and shopping in all the tents filled with tons of goodies. I hope you enjoy the tour. More later from Bend.

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