High Desert Museum

Jill's Journal: By this point in our journey, we’ve been to a lot of museums. So much so that we now skip them in each town unless we hear one is really something special. We’ve heard nothing but raves about Bend’s High Desert Museum for a couple of months now. It turns out all the good reports were dead on; this place is something special.

The girls are animal lovers through and through, so naturally, their favorite exhibits on Wednesday at the High Desert Museum were of wildlife. They particularly loved sleepy Snowshoe, the Canada Lynx.

They also had quite a time with these two rattlesnakes. One of the snakes stared them down (or maybe they stared it down). He slithered and stuck out that snake tongue and followed my hand through the glass for them. He didn’t rattle, although we all got a good view of the rattlers. They thought he was awesome (me, not so much…I had the heebie-jeebies).

We all enjoyed the “Spirit of the West” exhibit tremendously. It follows the region from Northern Paiute natives to fur traders (shown)…

…to the Oregon Trail littered with debris…

…to both gold seekers and hard rock miners…

…to an 1885 settlement with a complete downtown. There was also a cattle ranch with a bunkhouse and a chuckwagon and so much more. It was all done amazingly well.

This is a high desert stagecoach, which is different from a regular stagecoach because it features long leather straps, or a suspension system called thoroughbraces, to slightly ease the travelers' ride over rocky, rough, and rutted high desert stagecoach routes. This particular coach was first used on the Overland Stage Route in the 1850s and later on the Lake Tahoe Stage Line. Although it can’t be verified, it is thought Mark Twain may have traveled in this particular coach.

Another excellent exhibit traced the journey of the Columbia River Plateau Indians as they were forced onto reservations and fought extreme pressure to assimilate into “white” society. It’s a testament to their culture that so many kept their ethnic identity.

This is a 200-year-old tomahawk.

The girls absolutely loved all the kids’ sections, including this exercise in shadows and another on animal tracks.

Our only regret is that we arrived only 2 1/2 hours before closing, which we mistakenly thought was more than enough time. It wasn’t! There was so much to see we had to rush through the indoor exhibits and, other than this” spider web” just outside the door, we missed out on acres and acres of outdoor exhibits (including a 1904 homestead ranch and a working sawmill recreated through interpretive actors).

I daresay we’ll return to the High Desert Museum if we ever make it back to Bend.