Bend | 8 Legs and a Trailer

All the cool people live in Bend

After skiing, we did town things in Bend like get our Mazda serviced, eat at an awesome french bakery, stock up at Trader Joe’s (finally back in Trader Joe’s country!), and stroll around and window shop.

We also had dinner with the couple from the Advanture Trek blog; we shared stories and got tips from them on how to full-time on the road. It was also awesome to see their souped-up adventure van, which made our Mazda look like a go-cart. Katherine had previously given us some awesome advice on how to build out the trailer for ski-RVing, and her excellence guidance extended to tips on where to go and what to do in town. Thanks again, guys!

On our way out, we also stopped in on Robert Johans of the Egg Plant and Nest Caravans. He was kind enough to humor our surprise visit and show us his works-in-progress as well as his own beautifully restored Boler, which we had admired from afar through the FGRV forums. It was a little embarrassing showing him my amateur (read: half-finished) patch jobs, but I felt like the interior looked respectable.

Aww yeah

The latte art sums up everything

Beautiful river by the downtown area

Finally back in Trader Joe’s country!

Stocked up!

Mt. Bachelor: Parking, RVs, and Dogs

Bend! Oregon! We’re here! We love it. Hiking, skiing, backpacking, camping, rafting, paddle boarding; the town is a base camp for just about anything outdoors. We spent a week camping here last summer and couldn’t wait to come back to explore the town and ski.

Our first stop was Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. When we looked on the website, there is a page explicitly titled “Parking, RVs, and Dogs“, which are all the things we’ve had trouble with at other ski resorts rolled up into one neat, informational page. Naturally, we were really excited to go there because we knew we would be welcome.

And it was even better than we expected.

We rolled in to what could be best described as an RV tailgate/ dog park/ sledding hill extravaganza. Dogs were playing in the parking lot. Multiple fire pits were going. Kids were sledding down the snow bank. A videographer was filming for a Mt. Bachelor promo video. Someone was blasting country music.

There was a mix of all types of campers from Class A motorhomes to a VW bus camper, but we were truly excited about seeing ANOTHER BURRO! Woo hoo!

We ended up chatting with our Burro-owning-brethern for the rest of the evening, sharing Burro stories and maintenance tips (their Burro is in much better condition than ours). The next morning, we hosted them for pancakes and coffee, but totally forgot to get a picture of our Burros together before they headed back home. We only got pictures of our dogs.

We hung out in the trailer on Sunday, choosing to wait for a storm to come in and ski Monday on fresh powder (because we can). And it indeed did storm, which made for a restless night of howling winds, pelting snow, and the constant drone of snowplows. We woke up to a windy arctic tundra being cleared by monstrous snow-moving machines. Luckily it cleared up enough for another great day of skiing.

And that’s only the first two days! More to come! We’re currently in the Mazda dealership in Bend getting our car its much needed 22,000 mile service.