If you happen to be traveling to central Oregon, make arrangements to stay at the Blue Spruce in Sisters, our all-time favorite bed-and-breakfast spot. Don't wait too long. The place books up fast with return visitors.

The 5000 square foot farmhouse built in 1999 by Bob and Vaunell Temple, now operated by Sandy Affonso, features a comfortable great room downstairs with massive fireplace, a communal breakfast table with lazy susan, a game table and player piano. Bookcases display a broad assortment of reading material, games, antique bottles, clocks, pocket watches, crockery and objets d'art. Open one cabinet and you find a selection of free videotapes, all of them humorous, upbeat, nonviolent, and suitable for family viewing.

Four guest units comprise the upper floor, each with king-sized bed, TV and VCR, gas log fireplace, refrigerator, whirlpool bath tub, towel warmer, a waterfall shower, and bathrobes. The Lodge has a hunting motif. Curtains hang from rods that are the extended barrels of old-time hunting rifles. Antlers adorn one wall and others sport a mountain goat head and animal skins. The toilet paper roll turns on the barrel of an antique pistol, and towels hang from a rack that is yet another flintlock rifle.

The Ponderosa suite has a cowboy theme. The bed frame has horseshoes welded into headboard and footboard. The Metolius, named for the nearby river, has a fishing theme with genuine rods, reels, and pictures of fish used as decorations, and the decor of the Cascades relates to forestry and logging.

A clever feature of each unit is its special "mouse hole." The small recesses contain a nightlight in a mouse bedroom with tiny furnishings and dcor picking up the theme of the particular unit. A ceramic mouse rests on the bed in the Pondersosa room with a cowboy hat and tiny portrait of a horse; an archer's bow rests on the bedpost of The Lodge, fishing gear in the Metolius and a logger's saw in the Cascades. A guest book entry tells of a couple's five-year-old daughter who insisted on sleeping on the floor so she could look into the mouse hole while waiting for sleep.

Bikes and bike helmets are available at no charge. The back porch area is regularly visited by deer. The fawns are a bit shy, but their mother and older brother eat from one's hand and accept ear scratches and head pats.

Rusticity is the governing motif, and grainy knots of oak, hickory, pine, and juniper adorn woodwork, doorways, ceiling

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