central oregon

we took a trip to bend oregon with the sciulli family. saturday morning we headed out of town on hwy 26. the roads were ok at the mt. pass by mt hood... snow flurries as we drove but nothing to crazy.... as we headed down the pass towards the high desert it continued to rain and as we got to the redmond, bend area it was more snow again. our first stop was at the deschutes brewery & public house for lunch. mmm mmmm good.. beer and food. yummy... after that we checked into our rooms at the mcmenamins st. francis schoolhouse. what a cool place. paige and amy took a nap with the girls so ken and i had to go check out the pubs/smoking bars, etc... we had dinner at the st. francis that night and it was very good and the drinks tasty of course... hammerhead, irish stout, etc... mmmm mmm good. sunday morning ken and i took the shuttle bus to mt bachelor... after getting our rental equipment and ski passes we were on the slopes by 815am. .. the day started out kinda overcast at the top of the pine marten express... (halfway up the mt.) and the summit was closed most of the morning.. but the skiing was great.. i hadn't been skiing in something like 10 years so it took a run or two to get my ski legs back under me... we had some fun runs down the mt... some green runs and some blue intermediate runs... we took a break to get some breakfast and then got back to the mountain for some more skiing.. we covered a great deal of bachelor for only 3/4 of a day... we stopped for a couple pints around lunch time and then i decided to head out for one more run before the 200 shuttle back to bend... i got to the top of the pine marten express and saw that the summit express was now open... i had decided earlier if it opened i would have to go to the top just because. so i did,... it was pretty calm at 9000 ft and the ski down was fun... a little hard because my legs were growing more tired from the skiing but real fun... i had a spill up near the top because i'm not a very experienced powder skiier and i starting losing muscle control in my left thigh. at any rate, i made it back down to the main lodge and found ken, we turned in our ski gear and hopped on the bus. good day of skiing.... we got back to st francis and we had room changes, thanks to the ladies for taking care of that, we took our daughters to the turkish soaking pool and let the ladies relax in our cottage. a cool deal at the st francis is the cottages,.. three awesome little bungalows converted into a place to stay.... we stayed in the nunnery... at any rate, after cleaning up we got some pizza at pizza mondo and a few groceries at safeway and had dinner in our cottage... a good way to eat after dining out with the kids so much in one weekend.... monday morning the ladies went to breakfast alone and the dads took the kids on a walk to find breakfast.. we found cafe brasil, a bagel and crepe place .. yum yum.... we met back at the cottage and all of us went to a mountain store to look for some bargains... we stopped at the cafe the ladies ate breakfast at and got some sandwiches for our picnic at smith rock state park... we hiked down to the footbridge, ate our lunch then walked on the trails for a little bit.. the kids overall did pretty good but they were getting tired so we headed back to the cars, back to mt hood, back to portland... in summary, it was a great weekend with our sciulli friends! thanks for hanging with us! shaka!