The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Best of Bend, Breweries Bicycling in Central Oregon

September 7th to September 19th

Ride Director: Carolyn Laird
Ride Co-Director: Albert Meerscheidt
Ride Driver: Bernice Tannenbaum
Report by: Robert Botchek

27 riders enjoyed excellent routes and mostly ideal weather for 11 days of superb riding, sightseeing and convivial socializing in Central Oregon.  Several days offered the clearest skies this author can ever remember seeing in Central Oregon and we completely lucked out in avoiding forest fire smoke.

The evening happy hour provided daily structure.  Our tour directors, Carolyn and Albert, with their respective partners-in-crime Tad and Bernice, organized a tasty assortment of snacks and drinks each evening and then guided the group through a recap of the day’s riding and an overview of routes and other activities available for the next day.  Two of the evenings included special presentations, one on Oregon’s brewery scene (thank you Mikey from Fort George Brewery in Astoria!) and the other on the history of BAC itself (thank you Kate Gordon!).  Five of these evenings also included group dinners, with the last night also including a trivia contest and valuable prizes (think: Oregon-themed mugs and bars of chocolate).

Central Oregon is rich in outdoor activities, and the tour’s rotating base-of-operations (Redmond, Sisters, Bend, Sun River, and Redmond again) allowed the group to sample the finest riding in the area while visiting interesting destinations along the way.  Several of the tour’s routes use or overlap four of Oregon’s Scenic Bikeways, including Crooked River Canyon, Sisters to Smith Rock, McKenzie Pass and Twin Bridges Loop.  “That was another amazing ride/route” was a daily refrain from riders and served as a testament to the ride directors’ efforts to curate an excellent selection of routes.  In addition to the Oregon Scenic Bikeways, future riders will love the ride to Camp Sherman, routes including Pilot Butte (Bend) and/or Lava Butte (Sun River), Benham Falls and the bicycle trails around Sun River.

Central Oregon has a lot of cultural interest to offer beyond riding.  The SCP Redmond Hotel is a surprising gem in the small downtown of Redmond.  Sisters has a very appealing downtown – don’t miss Sisters Coffee Company, outdoor dining at The Open Door restaurant, Nepalese dining at High Camp Taphouse, and Paulina Springs Books.  Our stay in the McMenamins Old St. Francis School (a school converted into a hotel) put us right in the heart of Bend’s vibrant downtown near the banks of the Deschutes River.  If there’s live music like there was for our first night at McMenamins, then pull up a chair near one of the firepits and enjoy the vibes with the cool evening air.  Of our destinations on this tour, Sun River was the most resort-like (with pricing to match!), with pools, a full-service spa, indoor/outdoor pickleball, an astronomical observatory (daytime sun viewing and nighttime star parties are both on offer) and of course golf.  Sun River’s network of dedicated bicycle/multi-use trails was a treat.

Other Central Oregon destinations included on the tour’s routes and worthy of note include the High Desert Museum in Bend, the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, Mt. Bachelor and Tumalo Falls.  And there are nearly limitless hiking opportunities, some along the tour’s routes and others better accessed by car.

Thank you to our tour leaders.  We had a wonderful time in Central Oregon.