WHERE HAS OREGON? I don’t know, Alaska. What did Tennessee? She saw what Arkansas. What did Mississip? She sipped a Minnesota. What did Delaware? She wore her brand New Jersey. And so on.

We took a family vacation to Bend, Oregon and I’m here to tell you all about it. There is no plot, no climactic event, no real point to the story, just vacation antics until my space runs out.

To be clear, when I say family, we have two married kids with kids, but one kid and her brood are frequent travelers with older children and a motor home and so road trips with them are most common. That would be Kristi, Chad, their full-on teenaged son Tyler, 13, and their still normal, down-to-earth 10-year-old, Jack.

Tyler is on a quest to be unique and independent, which is stereotypical of teenagers. He lives wearing headphones, a phone in one hand and his Christmas Chromebook in the other. His body is sometimes in the room, but his mind is often gone to that cyber world of peers who spend much of their time showing each other cool stuff they’ve found on the Internet. When his headphones come off, he talks too loud, and HIS music comes on through the biggest speakers in the house at the highest volume he can get away with.

Tyler plays guitar and practices incessantly. We gave him his own portion of the rental house. He got the billiard room because of its heavy doors and a connecting bedroom. Jack, when seldom lounging, mostly watches Animal Planet, unless it’s scary. Then he watches “American Pickers.”

We did our best to keep everyone moving all week, driven by the desire to use all the facilities that come with the high price of renting a house at the Pacific Northwest’s premier resort facility, Sunriver, 15 miles south of Bend.

Readers who’ve been to Sunriver are now nodding their heads, knowing what’s in store. This place has it all — hotels, house rentals, private airport, golf courses, stables, kayaking and boating along the Deschutes River, a water theme park with tube slides, lazy river, indoor and outdoor pools, acres of green lawn and chaise lounges, and next door is their own village alive with groceries, restaurants, galleries, night clubs, a brewery, souvenirs, sports gear, toys and games and other semi-necessary trinketry. Sunriver has its own observatory with a dozen high-powered telescopes and astronomers on hand. At night people flock to see Saturn with its rings and the Ring Nebula.

Waiting in our garage were five bicycles. Sunriver is 3,300 acres of mostly meadow sitting where an ancient lake made the level ground fertile and green. Paved bicycle trails wind for 40 miles over a convoluted jumble of S curves and forked straightaways, as do the roadways. Sunriver has few four-way intersections. They prefer the roundabout. Curving roads converge at 11 different circles. Throw a handful of spaghetti onto a green rug. That’s Sunriver. It’s fun to get lost, and quite easy.

Then there’s Bend to the north, another fun spot with enough attractions to cause stimulus overload and a desire to return while you’re still standing there.

Chad and I are big fans of local craft beers. Wherever we go, we look for local brews. Last summer we flew to Toronto for a craft beer festival and I met Tom Green. We hung out.

Bend has their famous Ale Trail, the largest beer trail in the west spanning 14 breweries and three distilleries. If you complete the entire tour, getting your passport stamped at each brewery, you win a cool silicone insulated pint cup from the Visitors’ Center.

It took us all week, and many flights, but we won four. We all know that wives often adopt their husband’s hobbies, be it rodeos, classic cars, or brew pubs. Our women have learned to enjoy triple IPAs. They kept up.

What we couldn’t drink on site, we brought home, just like wine tasting. We filled a couple coolers with 22-ounce bottles and several growlers. They’re stowed in the root cellar, awaiting their turn at the table.

In case you head up there, here are our favorite brews: 10 Barrel Brewing, which was just bought by Anheuser-Busch for $10 million, makes Joe, my favorite IPA. Silver Moon brewing makes 97 IPA, named after the highway. Chad and I bought four growlers. Crux Fermentation Project has an awesome location with a big lawn and brews Outcast IPA. I liked Boneyard RPM IPA, but Chad didn’t like the tasting room, so he didn’t give the beer a fair shake. “The place is too small, too hot, no seats, no place for kids.” All true, but their RPM IPA is outstanding and is on tap all over town.

We bought massive amounts of fireworks for July 4 and set them off on a city street corner. Lawn chairs and fireworks were spread up and down the streets. We lit our $100 worth along with everyone else waiting for 10 p.m. when the city display burst forth.

On departing day, Sue and I spun off and drove the long way home, adding 200 extra miles, a privilege of the retired class. We drove through the lava beds west through Sisters to Eugene and down Highway 5. July 5 was our 29th anniversary. We wanted to do something special. We ended up eating at Dennys.

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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