Central Oregon info?

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About a weeklong trip coming up soon. We'll mostly be in the Sunriver and Paulina Lake area, with a side trip for a couple days down to Crater Lake. Questions are all over the map.

- Restaurant recommendations in Bend and/or any of the other spots (I know options at Crater Lake are limited)?

- I don't know how to flyfish. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] Anyone have experience with lessons/outfitters in the area? Alternately, anyone have any good spinfishing recommendations?

- I'll have to experiment with this anyway, but - any tips on taking nighttime shots of the sky with a DSLR?

- Golf is all booked, but any comments on the courses at Sunriver are welcome.

Thanks!

[WLVRYN]

Sunriver is a sweet area. I've been up there twice. They have many miles of bike paths to cruise around, so if you can, take your bike (or you can rent one). I'm not a fisherman, so I cant comment on the fishing. One of the trips we went white water rafting on the Deschutes river. Wasnt the best rafting I've done, but it was fun. My wife loves to ride horses, so she went horseback riding there too. We ate in mostly, just because its about a 15 minute drive to get out of Sunriver and back into Bend. The lodge has a good restaurant, and I know there's an Outback in Bend.

Crosswater is easily one of the top 10 courses I've played. Its great. The other two courses in the resort are OK, but Crosswater rules. We played it about 2 weeks before Daly and Couples played it for one of the Shell Wonderful World of Golf matches a few years back. They played it from the tips, which plays out at like 7,800 yards or something ridiculous. We replayed there after a morning round and played it as a scramble from the tips. We had two single digit and two 15ish handicaps, and I think we shot 82 or something.

We played a couple other courses in Bend, and only one of them was really memorable (Awbrey Glen or something like that).

I'm jealous. Have fun.

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Crosswater is easily one of the top 10 courses I've played. Its great. The other two courses in the resort are OK, but Crosswater rules. We played it about 2 weeks before Daly and Couples played it for one of the Shell Wonderful World of Golf matches a few years back. They played it from the tips, which plays out at like 7,800 yards or something ridiculous. We replayed there after a morning round and played it as a scramble from the tips. We had two single digit and two 15ish handicaps, and I think we shot 82 or something.


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I've heard nothing but good things about Crosswater, and we've got the unlimited package for three days, so hopefully I don't run out of golf balls.

Gold tees according to the OGA website are 76.5/153. Damn. I looked at the course guide, and I'm not even sure I can make the carry on a couple of the tee shots (I'm currently a 15.6). Maybe if we tee off a third round at 6pm or something I'll give it a try. Otherwise, it looks like the whites and maybe the blues if I'm feeling ambitious. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[HDPM]

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[ QUOTE ]

Crosswater is easily one of the top 10 courses I've played. Its great. The other two courses in the resort are OK, but Crosswater rules. We played it about 2 weeks before Daly and Couples played it for one of the Shell Wonderful World of Golf matches a few years back. They played it from the tips, which plays out at like 7,800 yards or something ridiculous. We replayed there after a morning round and played it as a scramble from the tips. We had two single digit and two 15ish handicaps, and I think we shot 82 or something.


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I've heard nothing but good things about Crosswater, and we've got the unlimited package for three days, so hopefully I don't run out of golf balls.

Gold tees according to the OGA website are 76.5/153. Damn. I looked at the course guide, and I'm not even sure I can make the carry on a couple of the tee shots (I'm currently a 15.6). Maybe if we tee off a third round at 6pm or something I'll give it a try. Otherwise, it looks like the whites and maybe the blues if I'm feeling ambitious. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

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Don't go nuts, play a fun set of tees. Sometimes playing the tips can be fun, but 17 zillion yard forced carries designed around the superball aren't that fun.

Tell us how it is. I have thought that is a good spot for us to go on vacation. We could drive there and it has stuff for everybody. My wife doesn't play golf, so other activities are critical. I really want to go to bandon, but I need to find how much non golf stuff there is.

[cold_cash]

Crosswater is your best bet, IMO. Watch out for rattlesnakes. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

As far as the fishing goes, if you don't want to flyfish I would recommend either renting a boat at any of the nearby lakes, or going to the Metolius river in the Camp Sherman area. If you're actually staying near Paulina Lake I would just go there. Suttle lake is good too, but again, depends on where you're going to be.

I haven't been to the Metolius for a few years, but it used to be that once you got below Bridge 99 you could fish with anything you want. All the other parts of the river are flyfishing only, barbless hooks, etc.. You might want to make sure this is still how they do it though. It's probably about 15 minutes west of Sisters, so it might be close enough depending on where you're staying.

The weather will probably be hot so bring your sunblock.

Do you live in Oregon?

This link has a bunch of stuff. Deschutes & Ochoco Nat'l. Forest Webpage

[offTopic]

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Don't go nuts, play a fun set of tees. Sometimes playing the tips can be fun, but 17 zillion yard forced carries designed around the superball aren't that fun.


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Well, there is a 687 yd par-5...I'll at least hike back to the tips and take a picture from there. There's a river along the left, so if I were to play this for real, I think I'd need to wedge it up to the whites and go from there.

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Tell us how it is. I have thought that is a good spot for us to go on vacation. We could drive there and it has stuff for everybody. My wife doesn't play golf, so other activities are critical. I really want to go to bandon, but I need to find how much non golf stuff there is.

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My fiancee is an avid player, but we've been iffy on Bandon because neither of us likes playing in the howling wind, and she doesn't care for links-style. I have read/heard that there isn't much around that area besides the golf courses.

[cold_cash]

Unless you're a very good golfer, if you play from the Gold tees you will not have much fun and likely want to kill yourself.

Here's my advice: Get a cart, play the whites, smuggle in your own beers and get loaded, then go fishing.

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Unless you're a very good golfer, if you play from the Gold tees you will not have much fun and likely want to kill yourself.


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Like I said, if I venture back there, it will only be when the sun is going down and there's no one else on the course. I take some kind of perverse glee in hitting the ball as well as I can, and seeing it splash down halfway across the forced carry.

Thanks for the fishing info - I've got the OR regs printed out, and will be consulting those as need be. We're coming up from CA.

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Holy cow! I went on vacation for a week, and returned to find that chaos had ensued over the 4th! I'm still sorting through everything that happened. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img] I'm transferring pics from the crappy "travel" laptop to my home machine right now, so I've got time for a quick summary before hitting the sack.

Thanks to all for the info about the area. My fiancee and I had a wonderful time, and plan on returning some time in the not-too-distant future.

We flew from the SF Bay Area to Portland on the 27th, and returned tonight, the 5th. In between, there were three distinct parts to the trip: golf, mostly volcano-based short hikes (Newberry Crater), and waterfall-based short hikes (Columbia River Gorge). I'll stick with the golf here, since that seems to garner the most interest.

Note: I'm a 15.6, so I didn't play any of these courses from the tips. If I had to summarize my hackerosity, I'm a short knock off the tee, hit my irons OK, and am hit-or-miss with the putter. If I keep the ball in the fairway off the tee, and limit the 3-putts, I'll be in the mid-80s. Hi 90s and the occasional 100+ are still possible when the lost ball count gets up there.

On June 28th, we played Aspen Lakes in Sisters, OR. This is a very pretty course, and not terribly long from the tips, compared to some of the other places we visited (although it was the longest course I played on this trip.)

Black: 74.4 / 139 / 7302
Blue: 72.7 / 134 / 6919
White: 70.8 / 120 / 6535
Red: 72.0 / 128 / 5594

I was happy to start here with a couple of bogeys, as neither of us had touched a club for two weeks (an excellent way to prepare for a vacation with a significant golf component, I highly recommend it [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). The happiness was short-lived, as I took an 11 on the third hole. Couple more blowups on the back, and I ended with 48-51...oh well.

The course is, I think, very fair, with no funky forced carries, and no hidden tricks. The greens rolled very nicely, and the views of the Three Sisters (along with the red sand bunkers) were striking. I'd give it 3.5/5, and would definitely play there again.

The rest of the trip was spent at Sunriver. We were staying on the Crosswater package, which I recommend highly, as Crosswater really is head-and-shoulders above the other two courses.

It's late, and I'm getting tired, so instead of spamming for the resort [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img] I'll say to go to www.oga.org (The Oregon Golf Association) if you want to see rating information. IMO, the courses rate as follows:

Crosswater >>>> Woodlands >> Meadows (with a proviso)

I'll start from the lowest...Meadows was very straightforward and wide open. Due to weather/scheduling, we only played the front nine here, so my review is incomplete. The course was very wide open, and holes ran very close to one another. This gave it a feel like an upscale muni (since the conditions were still very good). If this was a "normal" course, I'd give it a 3/5, as it was not "special". At this resort, it's more like a 2 or 2.5.

Woodlands was very nice, and more difficult than Meadows. As you might expect, it's cut through forest (and houses) so there's more of a rolling feel. The greens were again very nice, and there were a couple of odd tee shots and pin placements, but overall the course was tough while still playable. I played it twice and shot 85 (as the first round of a 36-hole day) and 90 (as the second round).

Crosswater is "almost famous". They've hosted a Wonderful World of Golf, as well as the 2006 NCAA Championship. It's only open to members and resort guests who have purchased the Crosswater package. The whites here were a little emasculating, as they cut way down on the forced carries. Having played there a couple of times now, I'd be inclined to either try out the blues next time, or formulate my own set of mixed tees.

Anyway, the whites play 6185, and the blues are 6811, so that was a distance with which I am decidedly uncomfortable. We played this course all three days, and my scores were 94, 84, and 90. The 84 was an outlier, as I didn't lose a ball the whole round, and that is definitely a rare occurrence.

Given the weather, I'm sure the greens were rolling a little slower than normal (or maybe a lot slower) but there were true. There are some forced carries from the longer tees, and there are also a couple of holes which force you to lay up off the tee, which I like, and the par 3s force you to use a bunch of different clubs (160, 177, 137, 204 from the whites), which I really like. Also, the holes along the Deschutes and Little Deschutes Rivers are gorgeous. 4.5/5...I highly recommend this course, and can't wait to play there again.

That's all I got. I may post some pictures, but it's way past bedtime, and I have to go to work for the first time in a week in a few hours. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[[censored]]

OT,

Im really happy to hear that you enjoyed your time in OR, I've played once at crosswater and had a blast.

As for what went on here over the 4th, ya crazy stuff. I'm not really sure what set it off. That time of year I guess.

Looking forward to the pics