Thursday, August 6 {Sunriver, OR – Benham Falls & Observatory}

The temperatures dropped 20 degrees today which made it the perfect day to bike 16+ miles to Benham Falls.  There was a buck sitting outside our house as we were getting ready to head out.

Justin started out navigating us and wasn’t quite sure how to get there so we had already logged 3 miles by the time we passed the SHARC.  Our detour led us to this Sunriver sign we’d never seen before…

Eventually Abigail got us onto the right path and it was smooth sailing from there. This was Drew’s longest bike ride ever and he did amazingly well. The cooler temperatures really were perfect for biking. We walked down to the outlook but didn’t hang out at the falls very long before heading back to Sunriver.

On our way back to the house we stopped at the bridge to get a stunning picture of the river

Due to COVID the SHARC is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays so we spent some time back at the house trying to set up all of our hammocks; however, we ended up finishing it later in the day after we played a couple rounds of frisbee golf. Justin ended up taking first place both rounds. It was a fun family activity though none of us are really exceptionable frisbee throwers.  We spent a lot of time off course in the hills going after wayward frisbees. 

Since we were already near the village we decided to do our souvenir shopping. Each of the kids were able to pick out some sort of Sunriver clothing attire. Jason has been wearing a KPMG hat of Justin‘s recently so I was excited to see him pick out something a little bit more appropriate for 13 year old teen boy. The rest of us got sweatshirts - although Justin didn’t get anything since it’s so hard to find things in his size.  We also decided to hit up Goody’s for ice cream one last time - fully maximizing our American Express discount offer. It really was delicious! 

Thankfully most of us had sweatshirts with us because the ride back to the house after ice cream was very cold. Back at the house we finished getting set up all of the hammocks set up and took some fun pictures. 

from Abigail’s perspective

It’s so nice to have Amazon Prime as an option that we were able to get a couple new ones shipped to us here early in the week. We had a 9pm reservation at the Oregon Observatory tonight.  It is the nation’s largest publicly accessible observatory.  It was still quite light out when we arrived but we were able to see Jupiter and Saturn. While we waited for it to get dark we listened to a presentation about the moon and then headed back to the telescopes to see galaxies, stars, planets, and other amazing astronomical wonders. It was fun to see Drew‘s curiosity develop and I love that he was confident enough to ask the guides the questions he was wondering.  They also did a star constellation tour using a powerful laser to trace things in the sky above us. Out of this world! 😏

The kids had fun making shadow puppets while we waited for the presentation to start

 

Wednesday, August 5 {Sunriver, OR – Twin Lakes}

Another relaxing morning this morning. Justin and I went on a short bike ride with Jason and Drew and then we took a vote to decide whether or not we should head to the river again or to a nearby lake in the Deschutes National Forest for the day. It came down to a tie and it was up to Justin to decide.  Justin chose the lake which sounded great to me! We got everything ready and loaded up including some snacks and watermelon and arrived at the lake just before 1pm. Twin Lake had plenty of beach but it was more dusty than sandy which I guess is pretty typical for this area. We settled into a nice little area and spent several hours on the lake floating around and relaxing. We brought our two new hammocks and got those hung up nearby as well which was pretty picturesque. 

This was Katie’s first time paddleboarding alone and she got so good she could tow around Justin and Abigail on their lounge floaties.

We knew that there was a possibility of a storm rolling in in the late afternoon so when we started to hear thunder rumbling in the distance we decided to pack it up and head back to Sunriver. We took bets on which of us thought it would start to rain and which of us didn’t and the reward for the winners (and the same reward for the losers) was a fudge pop back at the house. It ended up dumping on our drive back. We stopped at the Circle K and picked up some polar pops which has been a quintessential Sunriver experience for Justin and I on previous couple trips here. 

Since the weather had turned we decided to have a night in.  We cooked up some frozen pizzas, a box of brownies, and selected a family movie to enjoy with some popcorn, ice cream, and brownies. It’s a little tricky to find a movie that’s appropriate and entertaining for all of our kids ages but we finally landed on Artemis Fowl which ended up being a great choice. 

Tuesday, August 4 {Sunriver, OR – Floating the Deschutes River}

We enjoyed a lazy morning this morning letting the girls and myself sleep in a bit.  We knew we wanted to float the river this afternoon but weren’t quite sure what to do this morning. In the end we decided to leave the three younger kids back at the house while the rest of us went shopping in Bend.  JK&D enjoyed some electronics time and didn’t have to sit in a hot car while some of us shopped. We actually didn’t end up finding the items we were shopping for but did pick up some groceries at Costco and enjoyed lunch at Chick-fil-A before getting back to the house to get ready for the river. We dropped Justin‘s bike off at the marina which would be the end of our float and then parked at the bridge and got all of our floatation devices ready and off we went. We brought along one extra tube since we weren’t fully confident that everything would stay inflated, but we ended up not needing it and it was a nice foot rest for me. I spent most of the time hooked up to Carly‘s paddleboard and she maneuvered us along the river.

Jason and Justin split the time on the other paddleboard hauling Drew and even Katie for the last half. 

Abigail got to fully relax on my lay down floatie from Bali. 

It was a beautiful day.  In hindsight we wish we would’ve gotten on the river a little bit earlier because there were times where the sun was low enough that it was blocked by some trees, but everyone loved it!  We dried off the floatation devices at the marina while we waited for Justin to ride his bike back to the van to pick us up.  It was funny to watch Carly let the air out of the paddleboards and watch her hair fly all over the place.

We didn’t get back to the house until nearly 8pm so it was a late dinner. Most of the kids got in the hot tub while we waited for our pasta meal from Costco to cook.  Justin and I went on a short bike ride and then we started filtering through showers since hot water at the house is pretty precious. 

 

Monday, August 3 {Sunriver, OR - SHARC}

I was excited this morning to revisit one of the breakfast places that we discovered in Bend on our last couples trip to Sunriver. Chow is a funky little restaurant near Drake Park with lots of eclectic character and amazing flavors. We waited about 15 minutes to get seated outdoors only to find out that they had a limited menu and veggie benedict that I ordered and loved last time was no longer available. I modified a regular benedict but to be honest it was just average and the prices were much higher than I remember, though that may be because we were feeding seven people today instead of just Justin and I.  We don’t eat out as a family very often so these large dining bills are a bit of a shock.  The kids also accidently ordered sides of potatoes that they thought were included with their meals.  The kids thought that today’s meal was even better than yesterday so that’s a plus. 

We were planning on going shopping after breakfast to pick up some lifejackets to use for the rest of the wee however when we saw a line to get into REI we decided to bag it and just head back to Sunriver and get ready to head to the SHARC. The third session started at 12:45pm and they limit the occupancy to 200 people so we got there 45 minutes early and were about 150th in line. Glad we didn’t get there any later! It was fun to be at the waterpark without the usual summer crowds, however they have the lazy river closed which is my absolute favorite thing to do in a waterpark, in addition they limited each session to an hour and a half which is hardly any time at all when we would typically choose to spend the entire day there.

Drew did such a great job crossing these logs

So did Justin

Justin asked Abigail to switch the laundry at our rental house from the washer to the dryer. She came upstairs and declared that there were already clothes in the dryer so we immediately assumed the guests before us had accidentally left a load of their clothes the dryer. As Justin was heading down to investigate it dawned on me that our 18-year-old daughter might be confused when faced with a top-loading washing machine when we have a front-loading machine at home. 

We dropped all of our pool gear off back at the house and then decided to check out the village. It wasn’t actually as busy as we thought so that was nice. We were able to pop in to a couple shops and check out possible souvenirs and then we treated the kids to ice cream at Goody’s. Thankfully we had a little promo still through Justin‘s credit card that saved us $15 off of our three transactions. We’ll go back one more time to fully maximize that discount and our enjoyment. Since we were already out on our bikes we decided to bike the river loop before heading home to hot tub and get cleaned up for the night.