Central Oregon enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year, but on those rare occasions when the weather turns drippy or chilly, here are three fab places to go, from the High Desert Museum outside Bend to a beer-centric observatory in the city.

High Desert Museum

This spectacular wildlife and living history museum tucked just off the highway between Bend and Sunriver bills itself as the spot “where wild meets west.” It’s a perfect description. The 135-acre grounds offer native wildlife exhibits and habitat for raptors, river otters and bobcats. The 1904 Miller Family Ranch and sawmill outside is a living history site, complete with homesteaders and heritage-breed chickens. You can play frontier games, do chores and chat about frontier life with Mrs. Miller daily through the summer and on weekends, weather permitting, from September through May.

Inside the museum, you can explore Oregon’s earliest days, from the first American Indian villages through the westward migration. It’s the perfect way to while away a chilly afternoon. We spent hours in the Spirit of the West exhibit, which takes you from a Northern Paiute shelter to a fur trapper’s camp, a Hudson’s Bay Company fort, an Oregon Trail encampment and through the gold and silver rush.

Museum interpreters lead entertaining tours at 2 p.m. daily, and you may encounter those docents at other times, as well. The 19th-century assayer we met in the museum’s re-created boomtown of Silver City was most sympathetic when he learned that we had no ore to weigh. Clearly, we were incompetent miners, but at least he was tactful about it.

Details: Open daily from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. from November through April, when admission is $7-$12. Open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. May through October, when admission is $9-$15. 59800 Highway 97, Bend; www.highdesertmuseum.org.

The Hopservatory

It’s a rare brewery that can claim to have its own observatory. Actually, there’s only one: Bend’s Worthy Brewing. Worthy’s year-old Hopservatory not only holds public viewing hours Thursday through Sunday, it also answers the age-old question: Why are we here? To drink beer, obviously, but also to star gaze through an OGS 16-inch RC Reflector telescope and get up close and personal with constellations and planets. On hand to help: Grant Tandy from the Oregon Observatory at Sunriver.

No need to register. Just show up at 7 p.m. — perhaps after downing a platter of Worthy ribs or tacos and a pint of Strata IPA at the brewery restaurant — and take the spiral staircase up to the third floor. Be sure to check out the Transporter Room, too, where a mosaic floor depicts spaceships and starry sights, and video screens stream NASA satellite feeds and astronomical wonders.

Details: The brewery and restaurant are open daily at 495 N.E. Bellevue Drive, Bend; www.worthybrewing.com. The Hopservatory on the third floor is typically open from 7-9 p.m. on Thursday and Sunday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, although winter hours may vary. Suggested donation: $5.

Old St. Francis School Theater

The McMenamin brothers have made a business out of renovating old, historic schools and turning them into whimsical hotels. Classrooms become cozy guest rooms. Restaurants and bars abound. And in the case of Bend’s Old St. Francis School, there’s a theater, too, tucked into the school’s former parish hall and filled with cushy, overstuffed chairs and loveseats.

Movie tickets are just $4, and the theater bar will deliver pizza and Hammerhead pale ale (or any other McMenamins libation) straight to your cozy seat. This week’s lineup, for example, included “Spider Man: Homecoming” and the new Ryan Reynolds-Samuel L. Jackson movie, “The Hit Man’s Bodyguard,” plus the kid-friendly “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature.”

Details: 700 N.W. Bond St., Oregon; www.mcmenamins.com/old-st-francis-school