"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.