#bend or

Image Source: National Galleries Scotland

Bend Or, winner of the Epsom Derby and St. James's Palace S, of 1880 and the Epsom Gold Cup and Champions S. of 1881 (among others). He went on to be an influential sire, and through Phalaris is the direct sire-line ancestor of most Thoroughbreds today.

I didn't know nothing about Bend, I've spent years in Oregon, but I knew I was going to be in for a lot of surprises too. I just knew it. There was never really a reason for me to go to Bend. It's like a 4 hour drive and there's no schools there (at least that I'm aware of) so I just never got around to it.

I knew it was in the high desert and I knew Mount Bachelor was there and I knew they have lately been big on tourism. I did know Smith Rock was there but I didn't know about any other state parks before looking them up.

I also knew deschutes brewing was from there and the deschutes river runs through Bend.

And that was probably pretty much all I knew.

Anyway, the food was amazing. Arguably even better than Portland although Portland probably has a better variety. That really isn't surprising though, the food in all of Oregon is amazing. The food at the gas station is amazing. Somehow you'll go into a mobile and they'll be making wood fired pizza and shit. Or if it's a ma and pa gas station then it's like, burgers from a local farm. Everywhere all over the state. So it's not that surprising but tbh the creativity was quite impressive. Best fish sandwich I ever had in my life (steelhead) and best hummus plate I ever had in my life for sure.

I knew the nature was incredible but it honestly was better than I expected. It's probably a little more incredible than Portland (but also very different). It's like the "high desert" or whatever so it honestly kind of looks like driving the 5 that stretch between San Diego and LA, but then it's like so insane because you look ALL AROUND YOU and there are snow capped mountains (some of which are volcanoes). It's also crazy just driving around because like to the south is where lava from one volcano went and there's just black rocks and even caves and stuff, and then like in the north a different volcano spewed a different rock to make like smith rock (red). and like to me after seeing it all it seemed too like when some of the volcanoes erupted (this is like 7700 years ago and stuff), they like SERIOUSLY EXPLODED and like spewed lava like 30 to 50 miles through the air....... and they believe natives' ancestors witnessed it. I mean it was so crazy. And smith rock was beautiful. It's a GIANT canyon and it was like 100 degrees and I knew I could walk down in it and get out and survive but man as we were walking down with every step I was like I'm being an idiot I'm gonna fall the fuck out in this fucking giant canyon...... but it was fine.

Anyway the most shocking part of all was Bend itself. I was NOT expecting it to be SO TOURISTY. It is California's adventure vacation. It was terrible. It clearly grew EXTREMELY fast and now it's a tourist town. It reminded me so much of St Pete but they actually know what they're doing even less (which I didn't think was possible).

I mean they got a lot of things right that St Pete would never be capable of, but the lack of information everywhere was truly astounding. There were no signs anywhere. There was no like information about the activities you want to do. It's like..... we want to float the river! we brought our own tubes! okay go to the park and float. so you get there and there's like..... no information and it's not even on the water so you're like what the fuck? then they don't tell you how long to float or how to get back even though a million people were doing it. like it made no sense. we were all asking each other what was going on and nobody knew. i'm pretty good at following things but this just didn't even have anything to follow.

even the menus....... they were tourist menus like you can just tell after you've lived in tourist town.

i'd go broke living in Bend now that they got touristy. Living in a tourist area is actually so bad for residents for real. Like it wouldn't even be fun anymore, you have to pay for all the nature that's actually FREE in Portland.

It actually didn't feel like Oregon. I've been to a lot of places in Oregon, and that was California. It's all Californians living there, it's LITERALLY California traffic and it's getting worse, bumper to bumper, very aggressive driving, not enough stop lights, near impossible to turn left, just awful.

They don't understand that they royally just fucked themselves with how touristy it got. Oregon should throw a tourist tax on Bend and use the revenue in a way that the whole state would appreciate. But they're going to do everything wrong. Tourism isn't really an Oregon industry......

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