red dust

brad and i have been meaning to go to bend all summer. and then with the weird scheduling of this job, various other commitments, and the lack of car, we never got over there. last weekend was his last one in oregon, and it conveniently coincided with a "first friday" art-walk in bend, so we finally managed to go there. it was also the first real wintery rainy weekend over here in the valley, so we were happy to escape to (somewhat) drier conditions.

i love bend. it has so much of the culture and atmosphere that corvallis lacks. the art-walk on friday was great; it's wonderful to wander through crowded art galleries, sipping wine (and giving most of my overly-generously-full glasses to brad since i was driving). we went to drake park, visited the fall festival, and saw a play at the historic theatre downtown.



[deschutes river through drake park]


and on our way back to corvallis on sunday, we swung by smith rock state park, which is famous for it's sheer rock faces and, thus, very popular among rock climbers.





we soaked in the sun, walked along the river, watched the climbers (man, there's another hobby i want to take up!), had a picnic. it was just lovely.







it was a great way to spend our last weekend together in oregon. his last day (he had a red-eye out of portland, so he was here in corvallis most of the day), we read the paper in the morning, watched a movie, went for a walk. it was nice - it was homey. this is probably the last time in ... two years or so that we'll be living in the same place, able to do all these normal sorts of things.

so now that he's gone, i just feel very ready to leave here. i've enjoyed it here, really. but this time was really about us for me and now ... i leave for boston in exactly three weeks and i cannot, cannot, cannot wait to go and see my friends, see the city, feel full again.