Deshutes River Trail: Covid Winter Edition

 If you look down the cliff from the resort at which we are staying (Mt. Bachelor Village Resort) you can see the upriver part of the Deshutes River Trail. This is a lovely Urban trail that starts out down in the Old Mill district but then winds its way from the open spaces of Bend up the developing canyon of the river. The canyon part of the trail is a loop from Farewell Bend Park (and bridge) to a little foot bridge about a 1.5 miles up river.  You can access the trail from a couple of location up on the ridge (including a trail from the resort) but my Knee is REALLY bugging me today, so my lovely partner suggested that we drive the 5 minutes down to Farewell Bend park and avoid hiking an steep sections. She is so wonderful.  More about the loop here:  Deschutes River Trail

Bend has a couple of things that make it a rather unique Oregon city. There are the obvious ones, like it isn't on the Willamette river and it is in the high desert instead of the rain swept West side of the Cascades, but one of its more surprising and challenging oddities is the ubiquitous use of Rotaries (or, as Siri would have it, Round-a-bouts). They are friggin everywhere (thus my usage of ubiquitous).  You have to go through 3 of them in that 5 minute drive to the cute little roadside parking area for Farewell Bend park. 

Saw Mill Play Structure. Keep your fingers away from the blade

Looking toward downtown Bend.

Business Buildings up on the ridge.

Right before the river narrows and speeds up in the Canyon

Farewell Bend is evidently the longer name for Bend and I am sure has something to do with a Bend someplace in the river, but there are so many of them. This Park is dedicated to everything cutting down tree-ish. There is a lovely Saw Mill themed children's play structure in the middle. I know that as a child I just loved to pretend to be sawing timber into boards. Oh, the smell of saw dust in the morning. It smells like..... Progress.

Today, we are walking a little into the park (away from the canyon trail) to get to the little foot bridge that will lead us to the west side of the river so we can walk South up the west side of the Canyon. In normal times we could have walked up the East Side and around clockwise. But these are not normal times, they are Covid Times and one of the things that has been done to promote safe human interactions is to make the canyon part of the river trail One Way (counter clockwise).  Now, this is all well and good because we wanted to hike the entire loop anyway, but when your knee is killing you it might be nice to be able to re-trace your steps to take the shortest way back to the car. 

The One Way Sign. 

Actually, I sort of like the idea of a One way trail. If you are a normal person, it means that just about nobody, except perhaps runners, ever passes you. It is like you are walking through a little time island of your own isolation. Of course, if you are an old guy with a bum knee, everybody still passes you, but they do it less often. There sure are a lot of thin, healthy, fast moving people in tights running around Bend, let me tell you. Besides Rotaries, the most ubiquitous thing in Bend is healthy thin good looking people in tights. Well, and Micro Breweries.

Little Critters

One of those is the one we are staying in.

The river is really beautiful in the snow. Everything takes on a sort of Black and White picture feel that is only broken by the dusty orange hew of the Ponderosa Pines and the Green on Gold of Manzanita. This part of the trail is surrounded by high cliffs. Up on top of the cliffs are Condos and Resorts, but they are very nice ones and don't detract too much from the natural beauty of the area. In many places, the river is cutting through big boulders, so the trail climbs up a bit to go around them, but most of the trail is easy and even and wide and simple to manage. 

The little bridge at the halfway point is a great spot to take a few minutes and enjoy the sun sparkling off of the river. 

The View from the Bridge

We didn't have much wild life sighting but we did have a Douglas squirrel, the cute little local PNW squirrel, barking at us from a tree branch for awhile. I love seeing those guys.

And then back down the East Side. In shadow on this side of the canyon, but you get great views of the sunlit west canyon wall. There are also a couple of places where the trail winds up on the boulders and you get a good view of the rapids eating their way through the narrows.

And then you are back to the Reed Market Bridge (with pedestrian underpass) and the wide paved sidewalk of Farewell Bend park. Oh, look, there is the beach where you can put your raft or tube into the river and float down to the takeout at Mirror Pond a hour or so float away. In the summer there is a shuttle that runs to carry you and your float back up river. No shuttle today. Also perhaps a bit to much snow.

Post Script:

On Ubiquituity: We decided to reward ourselves for dinner with Covid takeout from a local Brewery. There were many to choose from but we ended up going with 10Barrel, mainly because they had an easy way to order takeout over the net (and their close by competitor wouldn't even answer the phone). It took them 15 minutes to prepare our burger. It took us 6 minutes to drive to the pub. During those 6 minutes we passed through 5 Rotaries (Round-a-bouts). Editor's note: And the food was delicious!