Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Friday, August 21, 2009

Round-Up comments from VA Visitor

I asked and recieve permission from VAvistor to post this on my blog. On Jul 29, 2009, at 12:30 AM VAvisitor wrote:We enjoyed our trip very much. Things I loved were the wonderful parade, the Happy Canyon show, and of course, the rodeo! Everything was very authentic and Old West which we loved-- especially the parade and the rodeo! It was one of the best I have ever seen (I've been to Calgary and Cheyenne and those were good too). We enjoyed the Happy Canyon show, not realizing until after that it was written during the "silent movie" era--I thought it had the ring of an early 20th century show, but we thought it was great. We were lucky to get seats for the rodeo under the cover for Thursday and Saturday although they were in the last row for Saturday. I am very glad that I did a little research ahead of time and found out that the Chamber of Commerce would buy your tickets or could sell you tickets to the rodeo. I had tickets for Thursday but they were not good seats. I was able to sell them back to the Chamber of Commerce and obtain better seats through them. Our lodging was OK, a little dumpy, it was a few miles out and looking back, I would have much preferred to have stayed right downtown where one could walk to shopping, restaurants and the rodeo. No place to eat out where we were staying but it was inexpensive and the staff was very nice, but once my husband drove out to the motel, he did not want to come back downtown in the evening, I had to come back by myself. I liked the downtown activities but that was not a highlight for me, we are not party people. I found the people very friendly and Pendleton is definitely a real "Western" town. I went to a bluegrass concert at your arts building which I enjoyed. I felt safe walking downtown at night by myself. We went to the Pendleton Mills for a tour which we enjoyed. All in all, it was a great week and I hope someday to do it again, although being on the East Coast, we may never get that way again. My husband had a conference in Portland and had his airfare paid for so that was how we could afford to go so far. Oregon is a beautiful state and I am glad I got to see the eastern and western parts of it--so different!. I will always remember my great week in Pendleton!