High Desert Museum

59800 S Highway 97, Bend, 541-382-4754, highdesertmuseum.org. 9 am–5 pm daily during summer. $20, children $12, 2 and under free.

It’s my favorite place in Oregon (indoor division), and justifies a trip to Deschutes County even if you aren’t lured by hiking the Cascade Lakes. On 135 acres of ponderosa woods, the High Desert Museum mixes otter, eagle and bobcat habitats with immersive historical exhibits, a handful of art galleries, and the replica of a 1904 sawmill. The eclectic mix is a legacy of biologist Donald M. Kerr, who envisioned a museum where visitors would ponder how people relate to the desert landscape—and he built a place where they could get close to it before he was incapacitated in 1995 by an infection contracted from the talons of a great horned owl. Nearly every element on the grounds is first class, from the salmon Caesar salad at the cafe to the display of Indigenous artists’ conceptions of Sasquatch in the rotating gallery this summer. As you’re buying tickets at the front, be sure to reserve a seat for one or two wildlife shows, featuring the museum’s birds of prey or its marvelous porcupines, Juniper and Tumbleweed.

Don’t miss: The critters are the obvious highlight, but the Spirit of the West exhibit is an equal wonder—it’s a series of dioramas without any human figures, so that the visitor becomes the sole resident of a vaquero corral or an Idaho mining boomtown where the shopkeepers have stepped away, just for a moment.

Will kids like it? For a certain kind of kid, this is paradise.

See the rest of Oregon’s Museum Trail here!