Let 'er Buck!

Judd finally got his cowboy hat.  It took a big, long Saturday to make that happen.  We did our homework and domestic chores Saturday morning before noon. (WHA?  it's SO convenient to have the washer and dryer in the back room compared to going to the laundromat every Saturday last year.) The Pendleton Round Up --motto: "Let Er' Buck" -- since 1910.p
"The Pendleton Round-Up has won the prestigious PRCA Large Outdoor Rodeo of the Year award five times: 2003, 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2017."
We dodged much of the traffic by going to the Woolen Mill first and catching an impromptu tour. We were among the lucky elite to get a last minute hotel (for probably double the 

price of usual weekends.) But we were a quick jaunt downtown for our 3:00 Underground Tour.  The entire down town Main Street was a massive street fair with food trucks, vendors, different country music bands on every block, BBQ smoke filling the air. It was VERY distracting getting to our sold -out tour on time. We had a splendid, knowledgeable tour guide regale us of local history--how Pendleton was settled, sheriff -ed, bordello-ed and cleaned up. We toured in tunnels under the town and saw the Chinese laundry and the opium den and gaol.  We sashayed in the parlour where Madam Stella Darcy, the last madame of Pendleton, entertained.  Her statue embellishes the sidewalk of Main Street right across from some famous cowboy. She lived and worked in an upstairs apartment on Main Street. Down the hall from the parlour and chapel, were "the working rooms." Each of the 4 working girls had their own bedroom as well and a shared kitchen and laundry room. The entire apartment was decorated in 1920+ period furniture and clothes and literature.  There was even a box of Trojans in one of the working rooms, but it was a box the size of a slide rule. (about 3 x 9 inches) Guess their pockets were bigger back then.

After dinner we wove our way down to the Happy Canyon Arena.  We passed the tee-pee city where the authentic participants camp for the week.  We were not in appropriate regalia and it felt a little like we were wedding crashers or parents at a college tailgate party. We passed the horse corrals and where all the rodeo "doggies" were penned and then past the kilometers of Indian jewelry and leatherwork for sale. We made it to our reserved seats in the stadium in time for refreshing adult beverages.

We had been warned the Indian Pageant and Wild West Show was "a little hokey" and indeed it was. We enjoyed the authentic clothes and dances and real horsemanship but the skits of ambushes and gunfights were a little hard to take.  Spoiler alert:  the white guys take over the Happy Canyon.  Our pics don't do it justice but there's a good video on their website:  http://www.happycanyon.com/
There was a real lariat spinner, and precision horse acts, but the biggest surprise was when the show was over, the adult guests were invited to exit the stadium through the faux dance hall, which opened into an actual casino. We partook of the "Pendleton Whisky"  (don't they know that whisky without an e is reserved for Scotch Whisky?!?)  We did observe the gambling and a  guy gave us a mercy lesson on the roulette wheel with free chips. We immediately lost.

Watch a 14 second video of the disco that Judd took here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeNe6NpBcjo

It was AFTER the after-party that Judd was able to select his hat on our way back to the hotel.  What do you think, boots next?

"Where does wool come from ?"

 We've been hearing about the Pendleton Round UP since we arrived in Oregon last summer.  When we got an embroidered tea-towel as a memento of Oregon, (already having an embroidered Maine tea-towel pillow from Susan-Friend) the Pendleton Round Up was about the only thing we hadn't seen in ORegon.  We were committed to leave WA and get back to OR.

The Round Up is a 100+ year old Rodeo/Street Festival and worth the 58 min trip from Walla Walla. Although I was committed to wearing my Western boots and Judd was committed to finding a cowboy hat, we were not all that committed to the "standing room only" portion of the actual rodeo-- I know, rookie mistake.  We hadn't purchased our stadium seats months ago. We didn't want to stand and watch the bucking (or the bronco-ing either.)  But we DID purchase in time: tickets to the Pendleton Underground Tours (sold out by the time we got there) and the Happy Canyon Night Show (highly acclaimed) and the Hotel 6 accommodations (bed and hot water but no shampoo or coffee-maker-whatevah.)  A good time was had by us. To be continued......
https://www.pendletonroundup.com/about.aspx

We did some of our homework/housework Saturday morning and departed in time to have brunch at "Wee Bit O' Heather" cafe on our way south.  It is a cafe for only breakfast and lunch in what was previously a drive in restaurant (but no more car service.)  It is Scottish-themed with decor around the walls/menus. The waitresses know the regulars by name and we witnessed one devoted soul even digging through the trash to find a patron's pills which got disposed of accidentally in a folded napkin.  Now THAT's customer service. 

In Pendleton, since we were too early to check into our hotel, we stopped at the Pendleton Woolen Mill.  We thought we were just bargain shopping, but we got sucked into the video on the wall of "how machines work."  And then, while Judd was taking pictures of rodeo queens, we heard overhead, "If you would like a factory tour, form a line."  WoW!! An engineer's / knitters dream..... The tour guide explained the warping and wefting and who dyes what wool and how it gets here and how many pounds of sheep it takes to make a blanket. One lady asked, "where does wool come from?"   'Sheep' was the answer. (good to know for Trivial Pursuit or Wait-Wait-Don't Tell-Me games.)  Judd and I marveled over what engineering mind figured out how to make 300  threads come together. And the factory figured out how to get crafters to buy blanket-edge remnants to weave into rugs....(SUCKERS-- we fell for it.) More about that later.

 

Random musings on Bennington Lake

-Bennington Lake is a 6 min drive from our house with over 20 miles of trails.
-We had driven by the access road all summer and seen a dude who rents paddle boards-- we wondered why and for what.
-This time of year, it's not a very big lake.
-We saw some canoe fishermen.
-The website shows a fuller lake, a greener background.
-The gender neutral restrooms were super CLEAN .

-The area abounds with hikers, bikers, dog-runners, walkers (what's the difference between a hiker and a walker?)
-Why don't horses have to bag their poop out?

-Soil and Water Conservation District signs, JUST LIKE IN MAINE where Judd was on the board.
-Engineers R Us....... SO many big job machines:  some identifiable, some unidentifiable, some indefatigable -- my Maine man just stood and gawked, stymied by some of the big equipment and it's uses.

We picnicked on a breakfast of boiled eggs, boiled new potatoes and salsa. I hear Judd say hi to someone and remark that we don't know anyone in Washington.  It was his counterpart-robot-teacher at the other school in town. They were out for a  dog walk.  We commenced our hour long hike around the lake. Later the locals  told us: watch out for  ticks and rattlesnakes. Oops!


At the Fair this week, we spoke with an Army Corps of Engineers intern and she enlightened us about what the heavy equipment up by the lake was.  In the spring, water is diverted from Mill Creek into the lake to prevent flooding in Walla Walla (which used to be a thing until the reservoir was completed in 1942.) The lake is stocked with rainbow trout each spring and only paddling, rowing, wind or electric boats are allowed. The big contraptions keep indigenous fish out of the lake. And some of the big metal grates were to keep tree-size debris out of the creek. An engineer's paradise!








HEY ! We found out what those not-wheat crops that are all dry and shriveled this time 
of year (for miles and miles across the horizon. ) Garbanzo beans !!  On our walk through the neighborhood, we saw one of the pods exploded and then we read a confirmation! 
Who knew?

Frontier Days in Walla Walla

 We started Labor Day weekend with the Walla Walla Frontier Days parade: many horses, many politicians, many old cars and so many people throwing candy at kids in every direction. Judd pretty much spent the day with his jaw dropped: "My father had a horse just like that."  "We used to have a tractor just like that."  "My dad had a van just like that except white with a red stripe on it. "
Norm took out the middle seat out and converted the inside to a DIY Westfalia, the fore and aft bench seats made into a bed for those Thompson road trips with 3-4 boys to Florida every spring.

We beat the crowds leaving the parade and made it to the Country Fair before there were lines at every food vendor.  I was half way through my gyro by the time Judd was able to make a selection.  His French fries were disappointingly limp and greasy and the fried oysters were a bit suspicious.  That just ensured he'd have to go back for seconds somewhere. After a walk through the bunny and chicken house and looking for one of his students' pigs, he went back  for the turkey legs. It was delicious and too big to eat. We sat in the sun and listened to the mariachi band and watched kids running like hamsters in beach balls in a kiddie pool.  We couldn't figure out how they breathe in there.  Maybe that's the point: run them until they pass out then unzip them out of the balls and return them to their parents. 

This tractor is as old as I am, born in 1955. But the boots are only a year old from my move out west last summer! The other heavy machinery taken from Judd's phone pics: