Bend, Ore. — A full moon hangs over the inky water as the canoes slip past and send silent ripples marching toward the volcanoes looming in the distance.
"Sometimes it's just nice to sit and float," says Dave Huycke, an affable 63-year-old guide whom everyone calls Hiker. My fiancee, Heidi, and I dip our paddles into the warm lake and inch up next to him, letting the languid currents nudge us along in the cool air at 6,000 feet. "It's so quiet here," he says.
Indeed it is. But taking a moonlight paddle high in Oregon's mountains in the middle of the night is just about the only time anything here can seem still. We are floating about 25 miles southwest of Bend, Ore., a former timber town that's rapidly reinventing itself as one of the West's premier hot spots for all things active.
Haven't heard of the place? Bend, about 3 1/2 hours southeast of Portland on the sunny side of the Cascade Mountains, used to be little more than a few defunct lumber mills and a boarded-up downtown. Now more than 70,000 people live here, three times as many as in 1980, and an REI store occupies one of the old mill power plants. Outside magazine and Men's Journal chose the town as one of the top places to live and play. Olympians, including Nordic skier Justin Wadsworth, train here. Several years ago, Lance Armstrong came to town to ride.
Few other mountain towns around the West offer a visitor as many outdoor-adventure options -- mellow as well as death-defying -- so close to amenities typically found in cities twice as big.
"In Sacramento, I'm about 90 minutes from everything -- the coast, the mountains, the Bay Area," says Tracy Peterson, an elementary school teacher who chose Bend over other destinations, including Ashland, Ore., to spend six days caving, hiking and paddling. "It's not like this, where you look out your window and it's all right there."
Getting to Bend is becoming easier too. Starting Tuesday, Horizon Airlines will offer two daily nonstop flights from LAX to Redmond, Ore., 14 miles northeast of Bend. Before, Los Angeles travelers flying to Bend had to connect in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Portland, Ore., or Seattle. The new route will make it possible to hop a 9:15 a.m. flight and be on your way to casting flies in the Deschutes River by noon.
"I can imagine a lot of Californians being very interested in that," says Jim Gentry, a 43-year-old from Simi Valley who was walking around downtown Bend on a hot summer day. "To come up here, go rafting, see mountains with snow on them, even in July -- you don't get that in Southern California."
