Bend No. 30 on NY Times’ ’52 Places to Go in 2015′

Another year, another national list Bend has made – this time a global one, actually, as the travel section of The New York Times ranks the city No. 32 on this weekend’s edition of “52 Places to Go in 2015.”

“New trails and ales beckon,” the headline over Bend’s brief summary states. (See the full list at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/11/travel/52-places-to-go-in-2015.html?_r=1)

The Bend write-up recounts elements familiar to any Central Oregonian, from the past as “a frontier logging town called Farewell Bend” to the trumpeting of how “this picturesque city of 80,000 is a seductive spot for travelers who are into craft brewing and the great outdoors.”

Beer plays a big part in the reason for Bend’s inclusion, as the writers note the area’s “26 breweries, three wineries, two craft spirit distilleries, two cideries and the Cycle Pub” tour.

But in keeping with the theme of listing places with new things happening, the writer, Dave Seminara, mentions two new distilleries, Cascade Alchemy and Bakcdrop, and a new cidery, Far Afield, set to open this year.

He also refers to two new mountain bike trails, Tyler’s Traverse and Duodenum, and a soon-to-open fat-bike trail at Wanoga Sno-Park, as well as “world-class skiing at Mount Bachelor, and an embarrassment of riches for hikers, fishermen, climbers, stand-up paddle boarders and kayakers.”

Tyler Roemer’s wide, immersive view of a fly fisherman on the Deschutes River outside Bend isn’t just a static photo, but like the others on the graphically rich page, it’s a brief, repeating video of a quiet if chilly day of fishing in the gentle river current, with snow dusting the rocks and trees.

The editors say they start the process by contacting dozens of contributing writers for a few hundred suggestions, then look for ones “we expect to be particularly compelling in the coming year.”

“We discuss the merits and drawbacks of each suggested destination in a marathon-length meeting (or two) before cutting down the list,” they write. “Our main goal is to have a variety of regions and interests, with some surprises mixed in. We also try for a mix of scale, including cities, regions and even entire countries.”

It’s definitely a variety of a list, with Milan, Italy No. 1, followed by Cuba and Philadelphia, then Yellowstone National Park and Elqui Valley, Chile. Bend slides in between Papua, New Guinea and Rabat, Morocco.