Drive out Century Drive past Powder House this week expecting all ten food trucks lit up and running, and you'll find three stalls still dark. That's not a delay worth complaining about. It's just the honest state of Bend's newest gathering spot a couple of weeks after its Saturday opening in mid-July, and it changes what a trip over there actually looks like depending on which night you go.
Base Camp, the taphouse and food truck pavilion the McGee family built behind their ski shop at 311 SW Century Drive, has been covered as open since mid-July. It is open. But "open" and "finished" are two different things right now, and knowing the difference is the whole point of this post.
The Lineup That's Actually Running
As of the most recent count from The Bulletin's coverage of the opening, seven of the ten planned food trucks are serving:
- I Love Ceviche
- Let's Roll (the sushi kiosk)
- Jazzy Joe Coffee Co.
- El Taquero
- Chonie's Pizza
- P53 Fresh
- Luckey's Woodsman Trailside Kitchen
I Love Ceviche's owner, Nicholas Cerveny, told The Bulletin that every vendor open during opening weekend sold out for the following two days. He called it the best sales stretch he's had. This is his second truck location in Bend, and the bigger lot at Base Camp let him bring in a larger setup than his spot at Bevel Craft Brewing, which means the fish and chips, his most popular item and one that happens to be gluten-free, comes off the fryer faster than it did at the original location.
What's Still Being Built
The full plan calls for ten outdoor trucks and two indoor kiosks, twelve stops in total. Three trucks, ThAiPAS, Mundrellis, and Kove, are still weeks from opening. Neither the rooftop greenhouse, which general manager Hayden McGee eventually wants running as a 40 to 50 person brunch space, nor the full event space build-out is finished yet either, even though the McGees say the 150-person event room can already hold gatherings.
That gap between the marketing and the ground truth isn't a knock on the McGees. It's the normal shape of a soft launch. It just means the Base Camp you visit at the end of August, once all twelve stops are live and the greenhouse is booking brunches, will be a noticeably fuller experience than the one you'll find this week.
Why It Took Six Years and 60 Applications
Todd and Shanda McGee, who have run Powder House Ski & Patio for nearly 25 years on a shop that's stood on Century Drive since 1976, started sketching the idea for Base Camp five or six years ago. According to reporting from The Source's feature on the build, they spent that time visiting food cart lots on their travels, taking notes and photos, before drawing the plans themselves and handing them to architects.
When it came time to pick vendors, they didn't just take applications. More than 60 food trucks from across Deschutes County applied, and the McGees had finalists cook for the Powder House staff, a taste-testing panel of more than 30 people ranging from age 20 to 65. Hayden McGee summed up what made the cut this way:
"It just came down to who's using locally sourced ingredients, making sauces from scratch, just overall attitude of owners."
The build itself wasn't simple either. Todd told The Source the construction process had not been as easy-going as expected, though he was glad to be nearing the finish. What went up is a roughly 7,000-square-foot timber building with reclaimed barn wood accents, 40-foot ceilings, and a rooftop garden built on repurposed shipping containers. More than 100 large indoor plants, some reaching 16 feet tall and collected over the past year by the McGees' daughter Emma, line the bar and lounge. Todd said the height and noise of a room that size required serious acoustic engineering, noting that most restaurants these days are too loud, and that his team went overboard on insulation on purpose.
The Design Decision That Matters Most This Particular Week
Here's the detail that's easy to miss in the opening coverage: Base Camp was built with full heating and air conditioning specifically because Powder House's foot traffic is heaviest in the dead of winter, and the McGees wanted a spot that works year-round rather than one that only makes sense in July.
That decision happens to matter for a different reason this week. The Akawa Fire, burning between Sisters and Culver, pushed two Bend monitoring stations above an AQI of 200 on July 21, according to The Bulletin's smoke reporting, unhealthy enough that outdoor recreation programs moved indoors and the outdoor pool at Juniper Swim & Fitness Center closed for the morning. The same pattern returned this week: the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued a fresh air quality advisory on Tuesday, August 4, covering Deschutes County and the rest of Central Oregon, and KTVZ's forecast has smoke sticking around through midweek. Highs sat in the upper 80s Tuesday, are expected in the mid-90s today, and could reach the century mark by Thursday before easing slightly into the upper 90s Friday.
None of that is a reason to stay home. It's a reason a fully climate-controlled indoor room with seven roll-up garage doors, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a covered outdoor patio is a better bet right now than a food cart lot with nothing but open sky. Base Camp can flex between the two depending on what the air looks like that afternoon, which is exactly the kind of week Bend is having.
How Locals Are Already Using the Space
Even in its first weeks, Base Camp has started functioning the way the McGees hoped. They've already fielded requests from community members to book the event space for weddings and 50th birthday parties, which pushed Hayden and his team to lean into a warmer, more celebration-ready design than they'd originally planned. In its first week open, Base Camp ran a Wednesday pop-up featuring Shark Mouth Fajitas and screened a Portland Fire game on the 18-foot projector, which can split into four 220-inch displays so multiple games run at once. That's the rhythm the space seems to be settling into: a rotating weekly pop-up alongside whatever sports are on, with the 36-tap belly bar and its lineup of premium tequila and whiskey cocktails running the whole time.
The building also sits with more than 100 shared parking spots between Base Camp and Powder House, and it's close enough to OSU-Cascades that it's likely to pick up a college crowd once the school year starts.
If You're Headed Over This Week
Base Camp is open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, with happy hour from 2 to 5 p.m. The fastest way to check which trucks are running on a given night, since the lineup is still filling in, is the basecamp_bend Instagram account, which Hayden McGee has said is the best place to catch new specials and pop-up announcements before they happen.
Go this week for the seven trucks that are open, the full bar, and a room built to handle both a 100-degree afternoon and a smoky one. Go back after Labor Day for the other three trucks and, if the timeline holds, a brunch menu in the greenhouse.
Jan Davey has covered Central Oregon's day-to-day changes since long before she started selling real estate here, tracking which corners of Bend, Redmond, Sisters, and Sunriver are quietly becoming the ones neighbors actually gather in. If you're weighing a change of your own, whether that's a property decision or just wanting a local's read on how a neighborhood is really living, Janet Davey is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
