I finally make it to the NW

We’ve talked about it at work for awhile and finally I scored a trip out to the Pacific Northwest. I was extra excited having just tasted some fine NW brews at SAVOR. We are going to implement some mobile technology on various forests around the country and the Deschutes National Forest happens to be one of them. Robie and I flew in to Portland where the Rogue Brewery brewpub was representing. Usually Robie and I travel in Montana and we like to laugh at the Hummer H3 drivers who look out of place among the outdoorsie Subarus. Robie has elite status so we just walk right up to our car and as I looked across the parking lot I saw that yes it was a H3. We took a nice drive past Mt Hood to Bend, OR. Central Oregon is pretty sweet with big thick forests on the mountains and dryer rangeland elsewhere. We learned that those in Bend hate Californians who come buying land and building houses and our H3 of course had California plates. 

In Bend we stayed at a place with a sweet view of the Deschutes River. We tried to go to the Deschutes brewpub on Monday but it was special night and that wasn’t happenin’. Instead we went to McMenamins Brewery. The next night I dragged Robie and Art back to the Deschutes brewpub and we had good food and beer. They had about a dozen beers available only on location. I sampled their Bachelor ESB on cask first and it was quite tasty. Next was some IPA on their in-house-only list and I enjoyed that a lot. I also had a taste of the Hop in the Dark which is a 90 IBU dark beer. Yummy yummy.

After two nights in Bend we drove a short distance away to Prineville. This is a very small town with some very interesting landscape. The whole town sits in a valley that is more like a gorge. Some study came out this week that said they have a 16% unemployment rate. We went to the Redmond Air Center to meet folks for work. They have an air tanker and smokejumper base there. We got to check out the smokejumper Sherpa plane. I tell you what those females who jump out of planes in to fires are damn sexy. They sell singles out of 6 packs at the grocery store so I picked up a Full Sail IPA and a New Belgium 1554. I wasn’t too impressed with their selection. My coworker Art who hooks up with hotel deals everywhere we go was the guest of the week at our hotel in Prineville.  See pic=>

After working at the Redmond Air Center we went “over the hill” from central Oregon to the western side. The scenery was amazing. We drove by the Three Sisters peaks and through the B&B fire of 2003 that burned about 91,000 acres. It was a site to see. We stopped at a nice overlook near Mt Washington. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera and my cell phone pics are pretty crappy (the one up top was stolen). The difference of the ecosystem between western and central Oregon was quite obvious. As mentioned, central Oregon is dry with lots of rangeland. Once over the “hill” the precipitation is like five fold. The forest is thick with moss and ferns. As Art said there are layers and layers of moss on top of ferns on top of other vegetation. We drove by Clear Lake and apparently there is a standing petrified forest under the water. There were also lots of ancient lava flows around. Robie, the former forester, said the cedars were bigger than he had ever seen.

Art hooked us up with some cabins on the McKenzie River. The river was flowing pretty good. Art took us up to his office in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. It is quite the place to work. We saw his deer friend who visits his office often and an elk on the drive. We had dinner with his wife at a nice place before calling it a night. Ideally I wanted to hang out next to the river, have a fire, and swill some fine brews. But after dinner there nothing was open within 50 miles to get beer and we were all tired. So I started a fire in my cabin, scored an internet connection over my phone, and got a little crap done such as this post. 

I’m all about Oregon. It’s laid back, the terrain and forests are awesome, rivers and lakes everywhere to have fun in, mt bike trails, mountain climbing, snowboarding, fine beer, and all the other outdoor sports you can think of. I’ll be hanging out here some day.