Days Inn Days

Oregon Cascades Travelog #6
Bend, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 8am

We're trying something kind of new for us on this trip. We're staying at Days Inn. Actually we're staying at two of them. Monday night we stayed at the Days Inn in Klamath Falls— yes, the one with the tweaker and possible drug dealer loitering in the parking lot at midnight— and last night and for the next few nights we're staying at the Days Inn in Bend.

What's the deal with Days Inn being "kind of new" for us? One thing is that I haven't been collecting points or elite status with its parent company, Wyndham. I have points and status with Marriott, Hilton, and IHG. I also have points with Best Western and Choice hotels— leftovers from scattered visits in the past— but not elite status. But really it's the reason why I don't have points or status with Wyndham that counts. Wyndham has a bunch of lower end hotel brands, and I've found them too hit-or-miss to want to stay at.

The Days Inn brand in particular has had a couple of misses for me. One amusing one is that when I booked a Days Inn about 15 years ago— yes, that's the most recent time before this week I stayed with this brand— the hotel turned out to have a cobbled-together collection of mismatching furniture in every room. I knew that because the manager let me visit several rooms when I arrived and pick the one I liked best. Different beds, different sofas and chairs, different dressers and night stands.... Every room was unique— and not in a good way!

But that experience is merely amusing. The one that's frustrating happened a few years before that, when Hawk and I stayed at a Days Inn near Yellowstone National Park. The room was terrible. It was dark like a cave (the "window" opened into a hallway that had been enclosed), the sheets on the bed were dirty, and the carpet was wet. Like, it went squish-squish-squish as we walked across the floor. 🤮

The problem went beyond just one bad room or a few bad rooms. The hotel also fell way short on service recovery. When I brought these issues to the manager and requested another room, they told me the only rooms with better windows and better carpet were upgrades and I'd have to pay to switch to one of them. I decided immediately that if I was paying to switch I'd pay to switch to a whole better hotel. I walked out. I have spend over 2,000 nights in hotels since then, and that Days Inn is one of only 2 times I've chosen to walk out.

So, how have these two recent Days Inn experiences been? Thankfully they've been way better than either of those previous two! The Klamath Falls hotel was a decent one, for a budget hotel. The exterior was drab but the interiors had been redone recently. And it had a pool and a hot tub... not that I had time to use them.

The Bend hotel also looks dowdy on the outside, like a relic motor lodge from the 1970s. Inside it's also more modern... but still, there's no mistaking it for anything but a budget motel. And the floor here does go squish-squish when I walk on it.... That's not because the carpet's soaked but because the vinyl wood-like flooring (there's no carpet) likely has a cushioning underneath that was cheaply installed.

We've got 4 nights at the Days Inn here in Bend. I'll share more thoughts as this stay progresses. So far it looks like we'll actually stay here all 4 nights! 🤣

Day 2 of Vacation: 3 Hikes, 6 Waterfalls

Oregon Cascades Travelog #13
Bend, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 9:30pm

Our Day 2 of this Oregon Cascades vacation has been a very full and fulfilling one. Yesterday was only a part day of vacation because it was also a work day (for me). But today we spent the whole day on leisure, leaving our hotel around 9am and not returning until after 9pm. In the middle we did 3 hikes, visited 6 waterfalls— or maybe more; I lost count— and drove 187 miles.

We left our room at the Days Inn in Bend around 9am. Yeah, we slept in a bit today. I swatted the snooze button until almost 7:30 then took my time getting ready after that. A curious thing is that when we were loading our car just before 9 we saw what late risers we were. The hotel parking lot, which was full last night, was now 75% empty, and half the remaining cars had doors and trunks open with people buzzing around them, loading bikes, coolers, etc. I'll add that to my notes about the Days Inn brand: this one, at least, is popular with the outdoors activity demographic. Unlike, say, the tweaker and drug dealer demographic.

Our first hike of the day was Tumalo Falls, not far outside of Bend to the west. I'll save my notes about the trek and pics of the waterfall for when I write a full blog about it. For now it's added to my backlog so I don't fall further behind in writing about this trip. Long story short, though, Tumalo was amazing. The main falls was almost 100' tall, and there were additional waterfalls higher up on the trail.

After hiking Tumalo it was lunchtime. Being not far from Bend was a plus because we could drive back into town to eat some real food instead of protein bars and water from our trail rations. We found a frou-frou burger place on the west side of town. Hawk got a custom burger made to her specifications with avocado, while I enjoyed a lamb burger with feta cheese and tzatziki sauce.

Fueled up for the next several hours we headed northwest on US 20 over the Santiam pass. Our destination was Downing Creek Falls. The trail description I found on a blog written by a local gal said it was hard to find. She did not lie. We overshot the unmarked dirt road twice. Then, once on it, it was a narrow two-track with no signs of where to go. Between her blog and notes on AllTrails.com we found the right place and enjoyed a stunning falls all to ourselves.

After Downing Creek we headed south back toward the pass and then down into the canyon of the headwaters of the McKenzie River. We then turn back east and headed back uphill toward the McKenzie Pass. Along the way we stopped to hike Proxy Falls. Proxy Falls has both an upper and lower falls on a loop trail. The lower falls is the bigger of the two but is hard to see from the trail. We made up for that by scrambling down a hill, off trail, then walking on logs across a creek, then wet-footing it out into the creek at the bottom of the falls to gaze up at it. Wow. I hope the photos I'll share soon turn out as amazing as the falls did in person.

As we finished hiking at Proxy Falls it was already getting late— almost 6:30pm. We thought we'd just drive up over the McKenzie Pass and down to Bend for dinner. Or maybe stop 20 minutes early in the small town of Sisters. But when we got to the top of the pass the views forced us to stop. Atop the pass, the winding little state highway traverses a lava field. There's nothing but lava rock visible in any direction— except for the tall volcanic peaks in the distance on all sides! And, at the top of the pass, there's an observatory... that's made out of volcanic rock. We couldn't resist stopping and seeing that in the golden light of the setting sun.

Somehow the stark beauty of the McKenzie Pass sated our appetites just long enough to drive back down into Bend. We picked out a Mexican restaurant for dinner and enjoyed plates of enchiladas there. Afterward we ran a few errands: buying groceries for the next day and filling the car with gas. We're back late this evening, but we're planning to get out early tomorrow for a big hike.