Has anyone been to Walla Walla in the last 3 years? Only a 5 hour drive from Bend....and a world away. This is a community re-inventing itself on the back of a rather long agricultural history centered on wheat. The new twist...Wine. 120 wineries and counting.

Downtown WW is thriving...would you believe a retail shop where the owner's roots are in Milan, then NYC and then Walla Walla? Hotel rooms are close to impossible to find when a wine event hits town. Quality is the bedrock on which this emerging wine country destination is being built.

A unique sense of place.....economic vitality....historical leverage and very Modern. It is the young (at heart) that are fueling this shift in WW. Folks who are willing to learn and to adapt....folks fueled with passion and a vision of the next 30 years that is clear. It is fun to see and to feel.

You can feel that in Bend, too. Go downtown and see people with smiles on their faces....committed to this place and finding their way in it.

Bend, of course, has a broader economic base than a place like Walla Walla. However, there is a vision hole I'm feeling at the moment in Bend that we should discuss. We have Bend 2030 to help us envision our future and bring people together to discuss that future, but it seems to have lost some traction in the community-at-large for the moment. That needs to change. And then we have Juniper Ridge which should serve to focus the community-at-large on what the community believes to be its future, but that seems to be a rather political hot potato at the moment where the discussion is more about who will make the money than what we want to work towards as a community legacy.

Thoughts?