Somebody in the Rhodes household hit the double nickel (55) birthday recently. As has become almost an annual ritual we headed over to Sisters, OR to celebrate with a combination of camping and rental house for a week.
Mia and I took Friday off from work so we could beat the holiday weekend traffic. We hit the road late morning and made pretty good time up and over Santiam Pass. Weather forecast was looking fairly fantastic with warm days and cool nights. Site 12 at South Shore campground had very limited shade so the Moon Shade was much appreciated.
Both Mia and I have been super busy at work for what literally feels like months. I had a random PTO day back in April, but prior to that the last time I had any planned time off was all the way back in September 2024. It was also the first real weeklong vacation that Mia and I had taken together since May of last year. We spent these days at the campground just relaxing, a little bike riding and a couple jaunts around the lake too. We even had some excellent people watching because of the sites around us. . At least four sites on the opposite side of our loop appeared to be one large family gathering with a gaggle of pre-teen to early teens, plus a few toddlers. Pretty sure some of the younger boys in some of the sites were directly out of Lord of the Flies
Have you ever been to a place that just resonates with you? A deep down in your soul longing to drop everything and move there type of place. That is Sisters, OR for us (Methow Valley in Washington is similar). A small town, surrounded by national forest. Hiking, biking, lakes, rivers, snowcapped peaks. For me personally Sisters is perfection.
We of course continued the annual ride up to McKenzie Pass summit prior to cars being allowed up. Instead of doing it on Memorial Day Monday though, we opted to ride up on Tuesday morning. Way fewer people and the weather was perfection. We kept remarking how it was all old people riding up or down the road. We’re both over fifty now, does that mean we’re finally in that demographic? I refuse to accept that.
Our next ride was a loop from the rental house that included the Sisters Community Trail out to Indian Ford CG, cut over to Cold Springs CG and then a bunch of new-to-us forest roads as we connected back to Sisters about a mile up from the Peterson Ridge parking area. This was by far the warmest day of our vacation with temps hitting the mid 80’s and not a cloud in the sky.
Then on one of the cooler mornings we took Codi over to the Metolius Preserve for a little stroll. His top speed now is around 30-minute miles, but he does enjoy spending time in the woods, regardless of pace.
For Mia’s birthday, Martha sent her a gift certificate to the Open Door Wine Bar. Fantastic food! Highly recommend. Definitely left there feeling happy, full and content.
We headed home a week after we arrived, on Friday late morning. In hindsight this was perfect. There was next to no traffic heading west, there were already a lot of people coming east, over the pass for their weekend plans. We made excellent time, stopped just outside Amity for farm fresh strawberries and were rolling into the driveway around 2:30-3pm. Still giving us the weekend to do all the normal boorish adult things like laundry and grocery shopping.
Thanks for reading,
-Pete
ON & OFF RHODES 