Bend, OR

I don’t know a lot about the East side of Oregon but I am learning. One day in July a good friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to the Mosquito Festival. I thought he was crazy. A festival about mosquitos is all I could think of and the look on my face must have showed it as he started to laugh and explain that it wasn’t about mosquitos. His explanation was that it was a huge, weekend long festival but he wasn’t sure why the mosquito part but he had always enjoyed himself. So in the end I said ok. This festival is held the 3^rd weekend of every July and unfortunately I have been only able to make it once but I definitely do want to go back as I had a great time. I can’t believe that growing up in the Central Oregon area that I hadn’t heard about it before. We packed up and went a day early. We chose to camp at the Summer Lake hot springs campground which really does have a hot spring and showers. The spring itself is enclosed inside of an old metal barn like structure and has several shower/changing stalls, all with doors and the spring itself is like a huge bathtub, ½ the size of a swimming pool with a basketball hoop and if you want you can use float devices to. We played horse on inner tubes the day we got there. The camping fee was only $8 and 3 miles from the main area of the festival. Experience did teach me at the campground to not to dance on the post pole fencing at 3 am. The hosts didn’t like that. That aside, let’s move onto the festival.

There were so many people and I enjoyed so many things and so much was going on over this 3 day event. The classic car show full of antiques and custom rides was one I kept gravitating to but there were street dancers, live music, an exhorbitant amount of food, a big bbq pit roasting 2 pigs and a cow, all at the same time. They had a parade but I missed that as I was dancing away to one of the live bands in a different area. They have a small little bar with a nice grass area out back, which is where I was dancing at the time of the parade. I saw a sheriff even dancing in the street and I still think he had a beer in his hand but I can’t be positive. It did make me wonder though. While I know I can’t ever seem to shoot a flying target, thus why I don’t hunt bird, I thought what the hell and did the skeet shoot and as expected, failed miserably. I joined in the fishing derby and lost at that to but I wasn’t familiar with the river and wasn’t lucky either, next time I’ll know the river better. I saw a few wild horses though as I hiked up river and that was cool as they thundered through the river about 500 yards in front of me. The craft faire in town covered 3 different streets about 3 blocks long which is one of the biggest craft shows I have been to in Oregon. Everything from home made foods to clothes, posters, musical instruments, native American “artifacts” though not real, to tattooists, furniture makers and much more. I can’t even quite recall all that I saw. There was even a rodeo and they let me sit on top of the chutes of the broncs and bulls so that I could take pictures. I do wish I would have had something other than a 35 mm film camera at the time.