Welcome back to Thebeerchaser. If you are seeing this post through an e-mail, please visit the blog by clicking on the title at the top to see all of the photos so the narrative is not clipped or shortened. (External photo attribution is at the end of the post.) (#1)
Most Oregonians know something about Steens Mountain in Southeast Oregon. That said, most don’t know exactly where it is, how to get there and that it is just one mountain rather than “Steens Mountains.”
The Steens Mountain Wilderness is 170,200 acres and I’ll tell you more about it in the next post. My wife, Janet, and I visited the summit in September on a 4 1/2 day road trip through Central and Eastern Oregon and it was a highlight.
The Background
We love road trips, but were stymied during the pandemic and this was only the second in over three years – postponed after reservations were made last year – by the smoke and wildfires that raged throughout Oregon and the Northwest.
The stage for this trip was set in the fall of 2013, when my brother-in-law, Dave Booher and our friend, Steve Larson and I took an unforgettable five-day journey through both Central and Eastern, Oregon, both camping and staying at old hotels.
Five days of Beerchasing in God’s Country
As you might expect, the three of us hit numerous bars and breweries – including one great dive bar that Janet and I also visited in our recent trip and you’ll read about below.
That trip, including multiple bars and breweries we explored, was documented by four posts in Thebeerchaser: https://thebeerchaser.com/2013/11/24/the-diamond-hotel-the-cutting-edge-in-hospitality-and-the-final-chapter-in-thebeerchaser-tour-of-eastern-oregon/
I might add that the idea in 2013 germinated when I was in high school and my dad, Duane (FDW), (to whom I paid tribute in several Beerchaser posts) and I went on his Eastern Oregon carpet sales territory.
He didn’t reel in big commissions visiting his dealers in this area, but absolutely loved the people, the geology, the history and isolation – besides being able to trout fish in mountain lakes such as Fish Lake in the Steens Wilderness.
When I was sixteen, the road only went to a campground below the Lake and it required us to hike in two miles. And we reeled in a lot of fish!
The Itinerary
Janet and I spent the first and last night in a Bend hotel and ate both times at one of our favorite restaurants in Oregon – Zydeco Kitchen and Cocktails. Great food, outstanding martinis, friendly and competent staff and reasonably priced.
Although Bend has more breweries than one could reasonably visit in several days (thirty!) as documented on its Bend Ale Trail, we only had an hour so hit Boneyard’s Pub which opened in 2018.
It’s spacious, has a nice bar and a great selection of drafts, but no real ambiance although maybe that was because we were there in mid-afternoon on Wednesday.
Janet had her favorite beer – Boneyard RPM IPA (6.5% – 50 IBU) and I had a good red ale –Foeder Red (5.7% – 10 IBU). We sat at the bar and the guy next to us was just starting his vacation, a Seattle Mariners’ fan and in a good mood so he bought our beers. (that helped the ambiance!)
When we returned on Saturday afternoon, we had the time to take a long walk in Bend’s beautiful Drake Park. That made us feel less guilty when we dined again at Zydecko. (#2)
Burns Oregon
Our second night stay in Burns required a little over a two hour drive through beautiful high-desert countryside with no urban centers to spoil the “freedom of the road” – unless you consider Brothers (66), Hampton Station (41), Riley (73) and Hines (1,665) to be metropolitan centers….
The 2021 population of Burns was 2757:
“Burns and the nearby city of Hines are home to about 60 percent of the people in the sparsely populated county, by area the largest in Oregon and the ninth largest in the United States.” (Wikipedia)
Burns is where a guy can still get a haircut for $20 and there’s a warning for Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employees on the entrance to my favorite tavern in the City.
One might think that with all the wildfires we’ve experienced, the city was named after a long ago timber blaze, but you’d be surprised to know:
“George McGowan named the city after the Scottish poet Robert Burns. By 1891, the community had stores, a post office, hotels, and other businesses. McGowan was the town’s first postmaster.” (Wikipedia)
Burns has one main street – Broadway which is only about ten blocks long. It’s the county seat of Harney County. We returned through the city two days later on the way back to Bend after our visit to Steens Mountain.
We were fortunate to witness the parade down this thoroughfare as part of Harney County Fair and Rodeo. It was awesome.
The Central Pastime Tavern
We walked Broadway after checking into our hotel in the early afternoon, but my primary goal was to revisit this great dive bar which I first hit in 2013 on the aforementioned trip – right on Broadway, a few doors down from the Historic Central Hotel.
It had been almost exactly ten years since I had been to the bar with my two friends and I was anxious to see if the watering hole still had its same unforgettable character(s) as well as seeing if the wonderful bartender (Patty) still worked there.
Patty, was the star of our 2013 visit. She served us great lunches (chicken gizzards, rib-steak and taco salad with Heinz 57 as a garnish….) and we each had one of the eight beers on tap.
Here is an excerpt from my blog post on that visit: https://thebeerchaser.com/2013/11/20/burns-oregon-a-hot-stop-on-thebeerchasers-tour-of-eastern-oregon/
“Since we talked about former University of Oregon football star and NFL quarterback Kellen Clemens, who is a Burns native, Dave decided to ask one of the patrons, ‘Do you know Kellen Clemens?’ The guy was listening to country-western and replied, ‘No, but hum a few bars to see if I remember the melody.’
But the conversation with the hard-working Patty, an attractive and personable lady in her late forties or early fifties, was the best part of this bar. I had seen the cocktail menu which included some interesting libations including one entitled, “Liquid Marijuana.”
I didn’t want to pay $9 and had already had a PBR, so Patty offered to fix a shot sampler and told us the ingredients: Captain Morgan’s Rum, Blue Curacao, Malibu Rum and a splash of Midori (green melon liqueur). It tasted like a Long Island Ice Tea with coconut.
“Liquid Marijuana”
We could have talked to Patty all afternoon, but she was busy and we needed to head to Diamond and our conversation concluded with this friendly exchange:
Beerchaser: How long have you worked at the Central Pastime, Patty?
Patty: Eighteen years.
Beerchaser: Then this must have been your first job out of high school?
Patty: And I thought the cowboys around here were smooth talkers. You city slickers put them to shame!
When Janet and I went in and each had our beers, I asked the bartender if Patty still worked there and her reply was:
“Yes, and for the last five years, she’s been the owner.”
She informed me that Patty was at the Harney County Fair (seeing her grandson in a talent contest) but she would be in Saturday morning because she was temporarily filling in as the cook! (Notice the announcement of Patty’s new role that now hangs above the bar.)
Patty – the new owner as of 2018
Well, since Patty had been one of the more memorable people I’ve met in twelve years of Beerchasing, we decided to stop back on Saturday morning and say “hello.”
We did that and since she was taking a quick break to watch the aforementioned parade pass by, I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just told her I had great memories of my 2013 visit and offered my congratulations for her ownership.
Her reply reflected what must be typical for most small hospitality business owners who survived the pandemic:
“Thanks Don – I guess!”
Now as you might expect, Eastern Oregon bars have a totally different atmosphere than those west of the Cascade Mountains or even Bend. They reflect the personality of the wonderful people who make their living primarily through farming, ranching, logging or in small businesses.
This is a generalization, but they are strongly independent, patriotic, fiercely defend individual rights and want the government and regulators to leave them alone. That’s why you’ll see signs such as the one in the Central Pastime which stated:
“Invest in precious metal. Buy lead”
Portland bars and breweries often brag about being dog friendly. That’s usually not the case in Eastern Oregon as seen by these two signs from LaGrande and Prineville bars shown below:
You can see a few pictures from the current and former trips below which demonstrate that nothing much has changed at the Central Pastime.
Stayed tuned for the next post on our night in Burns, the Diamond Hotel and then the trip to and up Steens Mountain.
Cheers!
External Photo Attribution
#1. Wikimedia Commons – (File:Steens Mountain (14591571776).jpg – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren – 8 July 2014.
#2. Wikimedia Commons (Drake Park (Deschutes County, Oregon scenic images) (desD0054b) – Drake Park – Wikipedia) By Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19098667. October 2005.
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