Although I flew in and out of Portland a few months back, I hadn't been overnight in Oregon (job-related or otherwise) until now. We landed in Redmond, a small town in central Oregon, a little after noon. I had the rest of the afternoon to explore. It seems there are a lot of natural features in the area, but most of the exciting ones are not easily accessible to someone staying at an airport hotel. I found some caves about a mile and a half away and decided to check them out. There are about four different caves, and I chanced across the first one after about a 30 min walk in the 90 degree heat.
This was the view of the cave opening, which by itself was not terribly inviting. As you can see, it is a rather small space. Out by myself, I wasn't terribly enticed to venture inside since I figured I would find either a homeless camp, teenagers making out, or bigfoot. As I continued down the trail beyond the cave, I ran across two ladies that looked fairly familiar and then realized they were the flight attendants from our flight. Everyone looks different in normal people clothes. They said they had gone into the cave and wanted to do it again.
Weighing in at probably 120 lbs apiece, they were not exactly imposing figures, but somehow this strength in numbers reassured me if we might end up in a brawl with hobos or horny teenagers. It was very dark inside. Fortunately they each had their cabin flashlights, whereas all I had was an iPhone which didn't do much. At some points the ceiling was quite low, and eventually I did graze my head, but appear to have survived the skirmish. The cave was about 100m long and eventually had an opening on the other end, where we emerged back into the hot sun. Then we all met up later with the captain for an early dinner at a dive bar offering Taco Tuesday specials. I had four tacos and a beer for $11. Not too shabby. The clientele of the establishment was almost entirely over the age of 60. The old folks like a good deal.
After dinner I walked around the neighborhood for a bit and along a nearby creek. It paralleled a golf course for a bit before abruptly ending at a residential road.
All in all, it doesn't seem like a bad place. The airport looked recently renovated and clean, people seem friendly, and there's good scenery in the area. On reserve, I really have no say as to where I go and when, but I wouldn't mind getting sent to Redmond again.
