Dang Summer Lake is long! Planning my day I thought maybe I’d spend the night in Bend, but once there I just didn’t feel like it, so I decided to press on to the hot springs.
I drove through Bend, and it was every bit the happenin, hipster-rich nexus of self-satisfied outdoorsy coolness that always is, and … it just didn’t float my boat (I seem to have issues with Bend…).
It was 3pm, and one path would have been to park the van; eat, drink, walk around the river, then lo-pro it for the night in “Old Bend”, the official name of the upscale neighborhood south of downtown. Oh, and spend a few hours in the very nice Bend library web-surfing.
But that was the path not taken. Instead I drove through town without stopping and just kept going on down that long road to the Summer Lake Hot Springs resort. And now that I’m here, typing and looking out at about a 40-mile view, I feel pretty darned good about it. But the last half-hour was stressful. Not heart-attack stressful, just “I wish this was over” stressful. I got to the north end of Summer Lake (part lake, part playa, part rolling fields of something, part sagebrush, but all in all, one really big, really flat valley), and kinda went into happy, “oh I’m here” mode, but alas, it was another 25-30 miles of a really scenic drive, that sadly I didn’t pay much attention to, because I wanted to GET THERE!
But now I’m here, $15 for the run of the place, got my van positioned just right with the big door pointed towards the maximum view, and I’m ready to hurry up and relax!
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