Redmond, Prineville and Sisters

Monday, June 26, 2017

  

We had a nice drive from Chiloquin to Redmond on Saturday.  It is great to have our car working as it should once again.  Highway 97 is a great road even though it is two lane most of the way.  Nice wide shoulders and lots of passing lane areas.  It becomes like a freeway when you go through some of the large cities with four lanes.  All along the way we saw these beautiful purple flowers close to the highway.

Our campground here in Redmond is the Expo Center RV Park is next to the county fairgrounds.  A beautiful Park with asphalt drive, concrete pads for the RV and car and gravel area for your utilities and picnic table.  Nice building for office, restrooms, showers and laundry as well as space for groups meetings.  Price is a bit higher than most fairgrounds but certainly far nicer than any fairgrounds we have stayed at so far.  Spaces are wide and most are pull through with an area for tenters as well.  We are close to town and have spectacular views of the snow capped Three Sisters mountains as well as several others including Three Fingered Jack, Black Butte and Mt. Jefferson to the north.  

After getting oriented and finding the local Walmart (of course), we drove yesterday to Prineville (established in 1868 and the oldest community in central Oregon) about 20 miles east through a couple of small towns and very rural but green countryside.  The only building worth photographing was this old courthouse built in 1909 at a cost of $48,590 and remodeled in the early 1990’s. We did stop at an overview of the city which was quite lovely.

Two large reservoirs are located within a 20 mile radius of Prineville and we found them being well used.  Lots of boats, picnic tables set in grassy and shaded areas and people sitting near the water enjoying swimming and other water sports.  A great place to be today as the temperature in Redmond is 100 degrees though a bit cooler here near the water.

Today (Monday) we drove from Redmond west to the cute community of Sisters where every quilter I met last winter said I needed to be sure to go.  Sisters is known for its July Saturday Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show which will be coming up in a couple of weeks.  Quilts are hung all over town and available for sale with demonstrations, etc.  Other textile arts like weaving, basketry, fabric dying and more  also take place during the following week. 

In the 1970’s Sisters was a quiet town and a major east-west interstate highway from Eugene to Redmond.  It was home to loggers and their families and a large working cattle ranch that was being transformed into a destination resort.  The developers wanted the resort to be quiet living in nature but with needed shopping available.  The long and short is the development company offered local businesses a $5,000 grant to build false storefronts of a Western theme and if they kept the business for 10 years, the loan would be forgiven.  The rest is history as evidenced by the pictures below.  All new construction must still adhere to this theme.  Today it is a very prosperous tourist and resort community and still a very busy interstate highway thoroughfare. 

There are many types of shops available from the usual town stores like groceries, hardware, but also tourist clothing stores for every day wear to outfitting for hiking, etc., antique stores, gift shops, bike rental shops, restaurants and a very lovely quilt and yarn shop where I purchased material to make a wall hanging with a Pacific Northwest theme. 

A drive west from town along Highway 242 (a very narrow and windy two lane road)  called McKenzie Pass-Santiam Pass Scenic Byway ( no vehicles or trailers longer than 35 feet)

 took us to McKenzie Pass (elevation just a bit over 5,000 feet) with a gorgeous view of Mt. McKenzie,

extensive high lava flow beds (snow still filling some crevices) ,

and beautiful and lush Douglas fir, red cedar and lodgepole pine forests.   Along the way we observed a controlled burn in the forest (interesting to observe).

 Sitting atop the windswept Pass (and it was very, very windy) is Dee Wright Observatory offering a sweeping view of the Cascades and lava flows which dominate this area.

Continuing on this Scenic Byway

would have brought us to Highway 126  and Highway 20 to either return to Sisters or turn west to Eugene.  We returned the same way we came as it was too late in the day to make the circle trip of roughly 4 – 5 hours. 

Tomorrow we will see what the town of Bend and the surrounding area have to offer.