Start from 45 curated places around Bend, OR, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Ariana Restaurant
An intimate fine-dining room in a 1910 Westside Craftsman bungalow — New American cooking with French and European technique, seasonal menus that change quarterly, and the wine list that the Bend community considers the city's most thoughtful. The grown-up dinner reservation.
Hawkeye and Huckleberry Lounge
A 'modern cowboy' restaurant from two brothers running a Tumalo ranch — wood-fired oven, beef and produce from their own land, semi-private canvas-tent dining alcoves, and a patio that has become one of the city's busiest dinner spots. Steaks are the headline.
Trails & outdoors
Tumalo Falls Loop Trail
A 7-mile loop in the Deschutes National Forest west of Bend climbing past Tumalo Falls and three additional waterfalls on Tumalo Creek — 1,450 feet of elevation gain, decent shade for a Cascades trail, and the standard Bend day-hike. Shorter version (1.4 miles to the falls overlook) for the easy visit.
Pilot Butte Nature Trail
A 1.6-mile gravel nature trail climbing the Pilot Butte cinder cone — switchbacks through sage and juniper, summit views of three Cascade peaks, and the standing afternoon hike for everyone who lives in Bend. The most-completed trail in town.
Things to do
High Desert Museum
A 135-acre indoor-and-outdoor natural-history museum 6 miles south of Bend — pioneer-era and Native American exhibits, live raptor presentations, an otter habitat, and a forestry-history trail through pine forest. The most-recommended day stop in central Oregon and worth the half day.
Hayden Homes Amphitheater
The 8,000-capacity outdoor concert amphitheater on the Old Mill District riverfront — touring acts from Willie Nelson and Wilco to Bon Iver and the National, all summer. The kind of mid-size venue where the artists actually play the audience and the river runs behind the stage.
Landmarks & sights
Old Mill District
A 270-acre former lumber-mill site on the Deschutes River converted into Bend's signature retail-and-entertainment district — boutiques, restaurants, river-facing patios, and the open-air Hayden Homes Amphitheater that hosts the summer concert series. The walking afternoon that everyone in Bend does at least once.
Drake Park
A 13-acre riverside park where the Deschutes makes the lazy S-curve through downtown — Mirror Pond reflects the surrounding trees on a calm morning, the lawn hosts Thursday-night summer concerts, and the Wednesday farmers' market is the city's biggest. The center of life in Bend.