This last weekend was the Bend Summer Festival (“SummerFest” for the rest of us, it’s shorter and easier to say) and despite my expressed ambivalence in the past toward the various seasonal festivals around here, we went on Saturday and had a pretty good time.
The weather was decent while we were there, except for a brief interlude during which it downpoured rain—about five minutes worth, and then the mini-squall moved on. Typical Central Oregon weather, though sooner or later some local will trot out the old chestnut about it snowing on the Fourth of July…
There’s great shopping to be found there—for adults. The kids got bored pretty quickly as we wandered among the various tents. I got bored after a while, too; there’s only so many arts and crafts you can look at before they start blurring together. Ultimately we did buy two framed prints from a photographer, and my wife got a bracelet and a scarf/wrap thing.
The children’s section was great. Like last year, it was sponsored by the Working Wonders Children’s Museum and had a bunch of fun and educational things to do. The best part was the bird house building; Home Depot had donated crates of kid-friendly bird house kits (seven pre-cut board plus nails and screws) and kids could assemble them and take them home for free. Well, kids and adults; I ended up putting together most of the two we took. But it was still a very cool idea.
Food—good (mmmm Philly cheesesteak sandwich…); alcohol—good but some confusion reigned as to when they could start serving. OLCC rules say not until noon, but no one was allowed to start til sometime after that, not sure why… regardless, my wife finally got to taste some good wines and I had a beer (only had time for one), a tasty Ropewalk Amber from BridgePort Brewing. There was a big selection of other beers on their sheet, too, I was impressed.
We didn’t catch any music—a consequence of having small kids who are impatient—but it was still a pretty good SummerFest. I like it best of the various Bend seasonal festivals.
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3 responses to “Bend SummerFest”
Hi. Saw you in my referrer logs : )
We missed SummerFest this year. Instead we picked berries in Albany. (Yes, drove all the way to the valley just for blueberries! And with a 3-year-old, too! Insane!)
Hiya!
If it’s any consolation, I’d drive all the way to the valley just to pick blackberries… I haven’t yet, but I would. 🙂
Who had the cheesesteak? That sounds really good right now.
We went down there for a little bit. By the time we got to the Working Wonders bird house thing, they appeared to be fairly gutted, and the kids weren’t interested.
One of these days our kids will all get older so we can enjoy ourselves at one of these things. Of course, just like you, I get bored looking at all the stuff, as it’s 95% the same stuff that appears at every other seasonal fest as well as the various markets that happen weekly during the summer.