Sisters: Central Oregon’s worst tourist trap
Sisters, which sits astride Highway 20 at the eastern edge of the high Cascades, was once an honest town. That was before the city fathers and mothers got together, almost a generation ago, and decided to dress the town up with fake Western store fronts and a cloying ambiance borrowed from Gunsmoke.
Today the town is choked with RVs, bermuda shorted tourists and shoppes that sell expensive trinkets. In short it’s as boring as a manufactured home.
On any given summer weekend, the town’s perpetual traffic jam also essentially blocks Highway 20, the main route east and west from Newport on the coast to Bend and then Burns in the high desert interior.
Just in case you don’t go for this sort of thing, a driving tip: Heading east from Eugene, you can get to Bend in just about the same amount of time by going south on I-5 to Highway 58 and taking Willamette Pass over to highway 97, then turning north. You’ll drive a few more miles but won’t spend half an hour idling in traffic behind someone’s Hummer.