TJ drove Julie and Donna to Bend on Wednesday morning. They stopped at Costco, then went to have lunch at Lesa Hill’s house and meet up with friends from their SendOutCards team. They had a salad buffet for lunch – each of them brought various fixings to make salad. Donna brought Jamaican jerk chicken with mango salsa and honey roasted almond topping with cranberries. TJ dropped them off and went to the library to work.

Meanwhile, I did a load of laundry at the park laundromat. I took my laptop and read a Kindle book while the clothes were washing and drying. I mapped out a route to Lesa’s home and rode the Spyder there to pick up Donna at 2:30pm. We wanted to hit the farmers’ market in downtown Bend. The farmers’ market runs from 3pm to 7pm on Wednesdays on NW Brooks Street – a pedestrian street between Oregon Avenue and Franklin Avenue at Drake Park (map).

Drake Park overlooks Mirror Pond and the Deschutes River. It’s a beautiful setting – people were lounging on the park grass and enjoying the breeze off the water. It was warm – in the mid 70s – but not hot.

View of Mirror Pond from Drake Park

Deschutes River

We were mostly interested in finding fresh fruit and vegetables. They had plenty – it was all very fresh but the prices weren’t as good as the farmers’ market in Chico.

Bend farmers’ market

Then we found something we didn’t expect to see there – fresh fish! Apparently it’s brought in from the coast fresh off the dock. I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but the coast is a good four or five hours away. We bought some rock fish fillets – the vendor double bagged them on ice. Donna brought a big plastic tote bag lined with reflective insulation material. We put the fish and veggies in the tote, then we stopped at the Bend Brewing Company for a cold one. I left there with a couple of bomber bottles to go. The prices weren’t as good as 10 Barrel Brewing – I bought double IPA and an Imperial Red. High alcohol beers like these usually cost more to produce.

We headed home a little after 4pm. Donna cooked the fish with a panko batter and served it with broccolini (also from the market) and cherry tomatoes roasted with Lucero garlic oil we picked up in Corning, CA. The fish was excellent – we’ll look for more next Wednesday.

Panko battered rock fish

I opened a bottle of Oregon IPA from Ninkasi Brewing Company to go with it. This is a very good west coast IPA.

Ninkasi IPA

Thursday morning it was downright cold! Donna’s phone showed 39 degrees outside! We went from one extreme to the other. The hot temperatures of the past week are quickly forgotten as the thermometer only hit 70 degrees by Thursday afternoon.

We went to Mike and Michelle’s site at 8am for the coffee talk with the group. Lance and Bonnie were there but TJ and Julie had left with their kids to take their 5th wheel trailer in for service. We sat and talked for a good hour or more, then came home for a bacon and eggs breakfast. I’m loving the homemade English marmalade I bought in Chico and had it on toast.

Donna spent the day working and had a productive afternoon. I rode the Spyder to Walmart in Bend and bought a hot air popcorn popper. We’ve been making popcorn in the microwave oven, but Donna wanted a hot air popper. We popped the last of the popcorn we had on hand last night while we watched a couple of episodes of Fargo. Donna bought fresh popcorn at the farmers’ market and I’m curious to see if it’s much different than the regular store bought popcorn – maybe I’ll find out tonight.

This morning it’s cold again and the expected high for today is only 61 degrees. Donna planned to go for a bike ride at 9am with a neighbor she met here in the park, but decided it was too cold this morning. The temperature was only in the 40s and she doesn’t have adequate cold weather riding gear.

I have a pump-out of our holding tanks scheduled. I’ll hang out until the truck arrives and supervise the operation. I’ve never used a pump-out service before, it should be interesting. Today marks the 11th day since I last dumped our tanks. We’ll be here for nine more days – we should be good until then and can hit a dump station on our way out.