Day 6 & 7 Bend, Oregon

We arrived fairly late from our long drive yesterday so we grabbed some dinner on the road last night…checkout this monster of a sandwich!! only $7 and it fed our whole family for dinner. Luckily we are the Southwells and we love our carbs!

We are staying in a cute campervan on a property of a few acres. Its quite nice and remote, and the van is surprisingly spacious although the bathroom is pretty squishy and we have to be careful with our water usage. The kids have really enjoyed pottering about on the property and making little homes for their toys out of sticks and flowers.

The kids made a number of little homes like the one above for their soft toys. They made a whole village of them. Its great to see them be creative and enjoy just hanging out. There is actually an Xbox and tv in the van but they have hardly asked about them. Funnily enough the owner of this property is a Microsoft engineer and they have got super good internet even though we are 40minutes south of Bend. There are apparently deer and rabbits here but we haven’t seen any.

About 15 minutes north of us is a resort village called Sunriver where wealthy Americans buy holiday cabins and come in the winter to ski and in the summer to bike and relax and eat french fries.  It’s pretty amazing and surrounded by the amazing lakes, and Pine and Aspen trees. Oh man I could stay here for a month!! There is a whole endurance sports festival here this weekend with 20 events over 2 days. really incredible. On Saturday morning Andrew had a half marathon.

Above is the early morning view on the way to the half marathon. It was a great run around the resort and near the huge lake, really fun! Don’t ask what time Andrew ran….he got a bit excited running 4:15 mins per km for the first few kilometres and it all went downhill from there. But thats ok as we are here just for the experience. And the post race donuts and bagels. I was even beaten by a guy in denim shorts. yeh..that bad!

 

Pretty cool timber medal but I wooden be surprised if the Aussie immigration people confiscate it for themselves.

In the afternoon on Sunday we were able to catch up with an old YWAM friend, Eric and his wife and kids, whom we had never met. He was one of our students in a DTS we led. Eric is a champion bloke who is really funny and down to earth and his wife Melissa is super lovely and his kids are so cute. We had a great lunch at a Restaurant sampling some of Bend’s fine local made beer.

I actually had an elk burger for lunch which was really quite delicious and tender. But, Oh dear, it did make me feel a bit jumpy later on. ha ha or maybe that was the beer!

Anyone who knows Gretel would know what a big chug-a-lugs she is when it comes to amber ale!

Bend is crazy about Beer! like way more that Aussies! They were handing our free beer after our races at the sports festival. They have a brewery right here in town!! All their social events in the summer revolve around Beer. I think they should rename the town “bent”!

After all that beer no one was thinking quite straight so we decided to hire out a “surrey” bike together and checkout the town!! ha ha so hilarious!!!

This was so fun to cruise up and down the paths next to the river that runs through town. We laughed so hard trying not to run over people and trying to pedal up hills (9 people and a steel frame with minimal leg power makes for slow going!!). It was all fun and games until I had a turn steering and Eric’s kids started getting scared and asking him to drive again!!

The next morning (Sunday) Gretel and the kids had their run. Jasmine ran the half-mile, Elise and Hamish ran the 5k and Gretel ran the 10k. (Geez America, make up your mind…half mile…5k….imperial or metric??). Actually interestingly –  people’s running watches don’t beep here every km but every mile which is weird for us.

Jasmine did really well and got a huge metal medal so she was really happy with that.

Elise and Hamish both had pretty good runs and enjoyed the different scenery.

More wood medals for the quarantine people’s collection at Brisbane Airport!!

Gretel did really well in her 10k seeing as she hasn’t been running much and she kicked her toe on some luggage on the night before we left for this trip – its pretty bruised and sore so we hope it isn’t broken.

Gretel looking good here in action! It’s really cold here in the shade but its really hot  in the sun so it’s hard to find a good balance. Finally Gretel finished so we could all hit the post race feasting!

Checkout the typical American post race feast!!! Free donuts, bagels with cream cheese, apple and choc pies, pretzels, muffins, chocolate milk, and more donuts!! so Awesome. This was worth the price of entry alone. In other unrelated news, none of us have pooed in days.

Gretsky managed to find some fruit as well. I do believe this is her entree. She may be able to poo next week with some luck.

After all the races we headed back to the RV to chill out and rest and have some down time. We did head back to Sunriver to use our coupons for a nice dinner at the Village bar & Grill.

We are having a great time, miss you all back home in Aus. Hope you are doing well!!