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“Endless recreation and sunny skies are exactly as they’ve always been, but in the last decade Central Oregon has been utterly transformed in terms of culture. Now, top-tier restaurants, arts, theater, entertainment, classy resorts and four-star hotels round out the Central Oregon experience. Events have boomed – there’s something exciting happening just about every weekend of the year, all accompanied by fine wine, gourmet food and the biggest selection of micro-brewed beer on the West Coast.”
-Portrait of Portland, Spring 2011
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“Imagine a town with amenities enough to win the hearts of urban refugees from San Francisco and Seattle, yet isolated enough to be free of congestion, pollution and the complications that are part and parcel of big-city life. Bend, a high-desert community of about 77,000 residents that is nearly the geographical center of Oregon, has for two decades been a magnet for active boomers yearning to break out of the fast lane and into a place where sunshine, scenery, and recreation rule. The attractions are at once sophisticated and untamed.”
-Where to Retire, May/June 2011
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Surrounded by millions of acres of Forest service land, grassland and wetlands, and hundreds of miles of fishable rivers and streams – and with nearly 300 sun-filled days a year to enjoy this embarrassment of sporting riches – Bend, Oregon tops this year’s list of the best towns for sportsmen.
-Outdoor Life, May 2011
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Bend sits among towering ponderosa pines on the bank of the Deschutes River. Originally a timber and ranching community, the city now relies as much on tourism as it does on logging and agriculture. Full of little shops, galleries, restaurants, and bars (Bend has seven microbreweries), the city is a rallying point for outdoor thrill seekers. Snowcapped peaks of the Cascade Mountains puncture the western skyline, and the largest juniper forest in the American West encroaches on the town from three sides. A look at a map reveals there are more than 2 million acres of public lands within a one-hour radius of Bend, with tiny tangled lines of water roaming through them all. Dominating everything is the thick blue path of the Deschutes.
- Continental, January 2011
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In a gorgeous high-desert setting at the foot of the Cascade Range, Bend is the ideal retirement town for active boomers who want to move to a smaller locale near the wilds without giving up anything they left behind in the big city. Bend fits the bill with trendy shops, cafes, restaurants, bookstores, the latest and greatest health clubs, and major medical facilities. Outdoor recreation beckons in every direction, from hiking in the Cascades to skiing at Mount Bachelor and cycling along the Deschutes River Trail, which follows the scenic waterway through town.
- Where to Retire, December 2010
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When people first hear about Bend, they
often imagine wet, mossy terrain. Oregon, after all, is known for getting rain, and a hell of a lot of it. Bend, however, defies that preconception. The city sits in the high desert, and the Cascades to the west capture much of the rain blowing in from the coast, which often leaves Bend dry and dusty in the summer. And this makes for some interesting and diverse riding. One might begin a ride cruising through canyons and over lava formations, only to enter lush alpine forests full of old-growth trees ... Bend truly offers a bit of everything.
- Bike, March 2010 |
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A white winter and plenty of ways to enjoy it are
two things, like many aspects of life around here,
that haven’t changed in the 50 years that Bachelor
has been open…It’s no surprise that, for a while, one person was moving to Bend every two hours. The great influx has slowed, but the reason most of them came remains: the bounty of a Pacific Northwest winter…I let Ralph go first and he disappears in a cloud of snow. It’s the end of the day and we’re skiing untracked lines right to the parking lot. No need to pinch myself. The first face shot felt real
enough.
-Ski, February 2009
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There are plenty of great mountain bike towns in America, but most have a downside…That brings us to our pick for the best mountain biking town in
America. A drum roll, please. Bend, Oregon. The
place was originally named Farewell Bend, because
early travelers were so bummed to continue their trip west. All the things that attracted those early
pioneers are what attract mountain bikers today.
Don’t believe us? We’ve got thirty-five reasons to
back up our claim that Bend is the best mountain
biking town in America.
-Mountain Bike Action, April 2009
- Mountain Bike Action, April 2009
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If you’re happiest pedaling, casting or swinging your clubs, consider Bend your primary destination on the West Coast, if not North America. How active is this town? As I spent an hour fishing just 10 minutes from town at Meadow Flats, a mild turn in the often cantankerous Deschutes River, at least a dozen mountain bikers, five runners and several hikers passed between me and the four people rappelling off the rock face 80 feet away...I quickly learn that, unlike most of us, Bendites don’t live for the weekend because they incorporate weekend activities (fishing, cycling, etc.) into their daily lives.
- Journey, September/October 2008
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Whether you spend the day hiking a glacier, scaling a sheer rock wall or prospecting for trout along the wide Deschutes River trail, Bend’s compact five-block downtown is a perfect place to recharge. Choose an outdoor table where you can kick up your feet with a brewery-fresh Hefeweizen and chat with the friendly locals. They’ll seem genuinely glad you made it out to their desert town and will willingly offer up their opinion on where you should go tomorrow.
- Endless Vacation, September/October 2008
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People describe Bend – with its easy access to an array of outdoor activities, including skiing, biking, white-water rafting and kayaking, hiking, golf and world-class fly-fishing – as ‘the new Boulder,’ a reference to Colorado’s athletic mecca. Mount Bachelor, one of the Northwest’s top ski resorts, is just 22 miles from downtown, and the city is surrounded by volcanic peaks. Benders take the outdoors – and their beer – seriously, with 71 parks, 48 miles of in-town trails and four microbreweries.
- USA Today, May 23, 2008
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Whoever visits Bend, moves to Bend, people warned me. So frequently, in fact, that I took it to be the official motto of this always sunny central Oregon playground – a blessedly bipolar high-desert home base, where you can trail run along the rushing Deschutes River in the morning and hit the snowy slopes of Mt. Bachelor in the afternoon. My kind of town…Bend remains a decidedly unpretentious community, where folks prefer moonlight snowshoes over movies, and unfussy hotel rooms run about $100 a night.
- Sunset Magazine, February 2008
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Maybe it’s something in the water, or maybe there’s a superathlete molecule in the air; more than likely, it’s some magical property in the beer. Whatever the reason, Bend has become the porch of preference for some of mountain biking’s big dogs. Straddling the banks of the Deschutes River with the Cascade Mountains to the west and Oregon’s high-desert plateau to the east, Bend is a year-round playground for all species of adventure-sports athlete. While terrain, talent and climate easily make it one of the premier adventure-lifestyle communities in the country, it’s the beer that really sets Bend apart.
- Mountain Bike, June 2007
Read complete article here
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Every place has its season – when living there makes you feel blessed. In Bend, one of the country’s fastest-growing cities, the showcase season happens to be, well, all of them. Take a midsummer night. It’s light until nearly 9:30pm, plenty of time to lob Wooly Buggers into crisp holes on the Deschutes River after work or hop on a bike to catch Beck at the amphitheater. You can ski through May and mountain bike all year and 10,000-foot volcanoes dominate the skyline. And there’s a lot of good beer: five breweries for 67,000 people, plus swanky restaurants, art walks, and film festivals.
- Outside Magazine, August 2007
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Quietly lurking in the middle of Oregon, the town of Bend is a Boulder, Colorado, in the making. It is a place of unabashed outdoor worship. Residents and vacationers come to Bend because they like to ski, bike, golf, climb, kayak, fish, hike – and some will knock all those off in just one week. A classic Bend summer evening rolls in with a fuchsia-heavy, orange-tinged sunset that plunges into deep purples framed by clusters of Lodgepole pine and Douglas fir trees, with Mount Bachelor and the western Cascades silhouetted in the distance.
- Seattle Metropolitan, February 2008
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With a proliferation of fine-dining restaurants, day spas, art galleries, and boutiques, the former mill town has attained a stellar reputation as one of the West’s vacation hot spots – a four-season, multisport haven where local diehards like to brag about being able to ski 25,000 vertical feet on Mount Bachelor before lunch and then go golfing or mountain biking in the afternoon. Outdoor retailer REI anchors the Old Mill District, a cosmopolitan mixed-use development with restaurants, shops, galleries, and the 96-room AmeriTel Inn, whose stone-and timbered lobby feels like the great room of a grand mountain lodge.
- VIA Magazine, January/February 2007
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For the ambitious residents of central Oregon, winter does not liken to hibernation. Oregon’s heartland, located between the base of the Cascade Range and the expansive high desert, spreads out around the upscale city of Bend, epitomizing loveliness and outdoor opportunities. In the summer, locals pursue a frenzied excess of biking, hiking, golf and boating. When the snow flies, those endeavors simply segue into a similarly hyperactive pursuit of skiing, snowshoeing and sledding. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself pursuing the region’s truly most arduous activity – keeping up with the locals.
- Skywest Magazine, November/December 2007 |
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Visit Bend | 750 NW Lava Rd., Ste. 160 | Bend, OR 97701