Sisters, The Town of

The Bend Ale Trail isn't as easy as just drinking some beer and wandering around town - to really do it right, you need to drive half an hour into the hills to the town of Sisters to visit Three Lakes Brewing.  Luckily for us, Sisters proved to be a great little town, totally worth the visit, and inspired us to head that way again tomorrow as we move on from Bend.

The Three Sisters peaks sit west of Bend - they are pictured above, plus Broken Top on the left.  Although they used to be called Faith, Hope, and Charity, someone more original took over and named them North, South, and Middle.

The quaint little town of Sisters - it's difficult to do it justice in photos, but it's really great!  Western-themed buildings, pine trees, and lots of quilts.

If this is their jail, there must be little crime.

Best bike rack ever.  [Note from Chad: the yellow portion, minus handlebars, is the state of Oregon.]

We visited just two days in advance of the biggest event all year - the Outdoor Quilt Show (biggest in the world).  Our server at the brewpub said that Sisters makes its money for the year this weekend; on Saturday they will shut down the highway running through town and 1500+ quilts will be hung from every surface possible.  Even today the town was crawling with quilters - easily identifiable as they all seem to carry bags of quilting materials with them.

Three Creeks Brewing - it's worth the drive just to visit this place!  The food was brilliant, and the beers its equal.

Five Pine Lodge - a gorgeous place but well out of our budget.  Employed people can enjoy luxury cabins in the woods the size of our last apartment.  It looks fantastic, as is adjacent to Three Creeks Brewing and the quaint Sisters movie theatre (which looks like an oversized barn).

Some may be worried that all we're doing is drinking craft beer.  Fear not!  We broadened our horizons this afternoon by visiting a craft distillery in the plains between Bend and sisters, appropriately named the Bendistillery.

Alrighty then, let's see how this tastes

As the DD, I didn't partake, but Chad was brave enough to try and advise they were actually really good!  [Note from Chad: I'm not much of a spirits guy except for Scotch, but the vodka and gin were flavourful enough I would drink either straight up.]

We took a quick distillery tour after tasting - the first shot is their of their still.  The second is the tank where they steep one of their vodkas with peppers (most red and yellow bell peppers, but also some others including habeneros) to make a pepper vodka.  Apparently good with pineapple juice.