I had only heard of the small city of Bend, Oregon one year ago. During our 3.5-month road trip last year around the U.S., we randomly started chatting with an enthusiastic, talkative man at the top of Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park. Due to our shared interests in life adventures and endurance sports, we ended up swapping cards and keeping in touch. Fast forward to now—I reached out to him and he told us we could stay at his house in Bend! In fact, he wasn’t even home when we arrived but he had left us a key and told…