8/30/2010
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| Above McNary Dam |
Today we woke up right before we docked at a small grain and container port just above the McNary Dam at the port at Umatilla.
We had wakeup call at 6:30am and breakfast at 7:00am and buses departed for Pendleton, Oregon at 8:30am. We did not get back to the boat today until after 4:30pm. We were scheduled to be back by 4pm and sailing immediately. But we did not sail until 5:10pm. I think we drove for about an hour to get to Pendleton. Oh, so we started sailing yesterday morning at about river mile 140. Bonneville Dam is at mile 145. The Dalles Dam at about mile 195. We woke up this morning at about mile 295. When we got back on the ship this evening, the boat was in Washington State, on the Snake River and at mile 5 on it. It is clearly a different river! There seems like no current, while the Columbia's was strong and rough. We are no longer in a gorge, so the scenery is very different. So, we don't know what we missed on that piece of sailing from mile 295 to mile 325 on the Columbia River and the turn onto the Snake River. Hopefully, it will be sailed on the return in daylight! (Follow up note: No, what is sailed in the dark one way is pretty much sailed in the dark on the return as well. So, nothing to report.)
Anyway, back to today. Pendleton, OR was an adorable little historic town. It is the home of the Pendleton Woolen Mills. Also, it is home to the World Famous Pendleton Round-Up, a rodeo. They are celebrating their centennial this year September 15-18 and they were really gearing up. Clay got a special T-shirt by a local artist with a pun on their logo. It is a bucking horse with the rider on top and the words “Let 'er Buck!” His shirt has the rider on the ground below the horse and ”Better Luck”. It was not a cheap shirt, but it was so much less than the official logo shirt, that he balked at paying that much and didn't get one.
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| Oldest section of Pendleton Underground |
There was some confusion here and we were told that we could take the included tour of the Pendleton Underground or we could take a shuttle from there to the Pendleton Woolen Mills. It turned out that if you really wanted to do both you could with no free time to wander around the downtown historic district. But, by then we had started our tour and we just stayed with it. It was fascinating seeing the different historical uses of the underground tunnels. Chinese people were subject to curfew and it may have started with them. Then they were big in Prohibition. Prostitution was not discontinued in Pendleton until the 1950s. Basically, a 4 block area of historic downtown that we visited was a red light district, with booze, women, gambling, gaming, and opium dens. Who da thought? Oh, they had several plaster Chinese baby statues; I have one that I inherited from my Grandmother, who inherited it from someone else herself. We had never seen any others! The Executive Director of the museum did not know much about them except that it is the thing people always want to buy from her. Weird!
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| It looked like this! |
We went into a used stuff store next door on our ambling walk to lunch. I spotted a Pendleton Woolens black blazer with a brands pattern. It was about 1 size too big, but I like my clothes loose. I bought it for $65. It needs to be dry cleaned. But, later we saw a vest of the same fabric pattern and it was priced at about $170 and Pendleton jackets were $280 and over. I am very pleased with my purchase especially since we only got to see the Pendleton Woolens Mills on a drive by. (UPDATE: I took the blazer to Brothers Cleaners at North Hills here in Raleigh. That was on the 17th of September. Today is the 30th and I have not gotten it back. There are various stories and theories from various Brothers Cleaners employees and managers, but the bottom line is that my Pendleton Blazer is gone! I have negotiated a payment for my loss, but I am told it will be 2 to 3 weeks before I receive it. Will come back to keep the outcome posted here... The check arrived in the mail on October 5, 2010, so that whole sad ordeal is now closed.)
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| Oregon Trail visible as dark area to right |
Anyway, the town was delightful and the surrounding landscape was dramatic. Near here are places where you can see the remnants of the Oregon Trail.
We had a delicious lunch at Hamley's. It is now in its 5th generation, and over 127 years. The first Hamley to come over to the US was a leatherworker to English royalty and they are still world famous saddle makers. The place is enormous with shops and saddles and boots and art and clothes and restaurants and saloons. We dined upstairs in a large saloon with a pressed tin ceiling, red chandeliers, a really cool set of belt-driven 2-bladed ceiling fans and a huge ornately carved wooden bar. There were some funny photos in the hall to restrooms with a series of photos of Hamley's employees holding their Thanksgiving turkeys from the 1930s and 1940s. I want to give props to Cruise West for taking my dietary restriction of no salt very seriously. Hamley's served me a special salad with special salad dressing and a specially made roast pork plate. Clay and I had the same thing and he could taste both my special serving and compare it to his. In a couple of cases, mine was tastier! Anyway, many times I have seen tour companies and cruise lines just blow off and pay lip service to dietary restrictions but I am not seeing that here. Good job, Cruise West and Hamley's. (Follow up note here: Sadly, this did not hold as a pattern. The other lunches we had off ship, I either ate what everyone else ate, or skipped the meal! I also got one server on the boat later who couldn't be bothered and so I got a couple of big salt doses onboard too.)
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| Huckleberries! |
After lunch, we reboarded the buses for a quick drive to just outside town with a view of the Oregon Trail. Don our guest speaker on the bus, told us about our next stop and huckleberries! He was funny. I got some raw huckleberries from the cafe at the museum we went to and brought them back out to the bus so people could see them. Don could not explain what a huckleberry was, just that we should get some ice cream or something else they make with them there. We did get huckleberry ice cream cones and it was delicious. In case you are curious about huckleberries, they look like a blueberry with an innie instead of an outie, they are purple instead of blue and they are tangier-tasting than blueberries. Delicious. It is huckleberry season right now!
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| Tamastslikt Cultural Institute |
Anyway, I got carried away; all of this was at the
Tamastslikt Cultural Institute. (Pronounced: tum lust licked. It means interpreter.) It is the only museum along the Oregon Trail devoted to the Indian point of view. It is 10 years old this year. It was very well done and very attractive. There was a short outdoor path that we walked and saw some nesting hawks of some kind as well as startling out a pair of bobwhites! We were there about an hour or so. We got back on the bus for a strange bus ride of about another hour to rejoin the boat as described above. We swapped guides this afternoon and had Alison. A funny story is that Alison in the morning told the people on her bus to go wild when they saw a cow in the afternoon. So, when Don moved to that bus on the return to the boat, he was freaked out before he realized the joke was on him! Anyway, it carried on for the entire cruise whenever a cow appeared half of the boat's population that had been on that bus that morning went gaga. It was a funny runny joke! Anyway, Alison showed a video of the first couple of years of the Pendleton Round-Up since this is its centennial. Then she spoke about geology, agriculture and the Ice Age Flood.
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| Some of the interesting area geology on view |
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| Ugliest Port! Cliff, our bus driver seeing us off... |
When we arrived back at the boat, it was docked at Pasco/Burbank in one of the world's ugliest ports. It happens. Goa still wins the ugliest port prize though just barely and mainly as a result of sheer size and scale. This port ships out scrapped and crushed cars and wood chips. Alison told us it is also home to a blind beaver, but he did not make an appearance for us. Too bad, I would have liked to see that. Why would even a blind beaver choose to live there? The Snake River is widening but still much more placid than the Columbia and the sides are rising, though not as gorge-like. It is still quite scenic. Dinner is in 45 minutes or so, so more later!
We returned to the first table we had dinner at onboard. We like that waiter, Frank, and we had 2 couples to sit with that we had dined with both before. The dining room is on our deck, 1. It has 6 large round tables in 2 rows of 3 in the center of the room. We always sit at one of the tables, so we can sit beside one another with Debbie facing forward. The window seats on both sides are booths that sit 6 people. They end up passing plates back and forth, etc., because the booths are too deep. So anyway, we had an enjoyable time. Luis came during dinner and told me he had a surprise for me if I finished my vegetables. First of all, it was roasted peppers and onions and eggplant, so I wasn't eating it anyway. Second of all, I really hate surprises! Anyway, after dinner Clay told him I ate all my vegetables and the other people at the table all confirmed while I shook my head. Luis said that I should be very impressed because the kitchen had on such short notice prepared a huckleberry pie with huckleberry ice cream and Don Popejoy from our bus was going to serve it. I think maybe it was a joke. Because I ordered, along with the rest of the table the molten chocolate cake and we all enjoyed it very much. (Follow up note: Clay says this was the best and only really good dessert served on the entire cruise!) Don and Luis never came back, so I think it was supposed to be a joke. It was amusing that they were still running with my fascination of huckleberries not being fictional.
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| Scary! And wet! |
Right before dinner we locked through at Ice Harbor Dam. This is the first one we saw with gates that raised and lowered instead of swinging. Luckily, we were not on the top deck because it was still dripping wet from being underwater for its last use and rained all down the boat. The water was kind of stinky!
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| Ice Harbor Dam - Lock next to spillway |
Also, this was the first one we saw that had the navigational lock directly next to the dam and you could view the spillway on approach and once the boat reached the top of the lock. Fun. After dinner, Don was going to do a presentation in the lounge about a woman journal writer and what she wrote about her trip to Portland on the Oregon Trail. We went to the cabin because we were tired and you can hear it on the Narration Box in the cabins. Right after he started we reached the Lower Monumental Dam and lock. The Captain broke in and announced that we were going to share this lock with a tug and barge and that this only happened rarely and everyone should come out on deck to watch. So the talk was postponed. On the bus earlier in the day, my Cruise West pen had a problem. The plug at the dull end of the pen pulled out and lodged in the cap, so you could no longer cap the pen. I had a pair of tweezers in my bathroom bag and meant to use them to pull that plug out of the cap and throw it away! I reached in and got a bad surprise. The protective cap on my razor had come off and I cut a dime-sized chunk of flesh off the top of the first knuckle on my left middle finger. Man, was it ever bleeding. It turned out that I had packed nothing to stop bleeding or any antibiotic ointment. I had a Band-Aid and put that on and rapidly bled through it. Clay and I got dressed again and I went to find the first person I could for a first aid kit. The dining room doors were open at the end of the hall and I went there. Alison and Luis were standing there together and instantly mobilized. They took good care of me and like me, the first dressing bled through too rapidly and we all had to relocate and try again. The second one was really bulky, but saw me through the night. The best thing was that they had antibiotic ointment and some small condom-looking finger protectors so it didn't matter about bleeding through, it wouldn't get on anything else. They made sure I had enough supplies for 4-5 days. Thoughtful.( A follow-up note here, the lock sharing incident must have been impressive, passengers have been talking about it for days. Apparently, Tugboat Captain Bob had 3 huge Tidewater grain barges. He had 2 side-by-sides with one behind and him next to that one. The 2 lead side-by-side barges evidently just fit with about 3 inches to spare on each side. Then we pulled in next to the back barge, behind the tugboat. It was a full lock and filled much more quickly by all accounts. Loving everything about the locks, I am very sorry to have missed it.) Don started his talk again after about an hour and I must confess that I fell asleep before the end of it! I slept through the night the best yet, even with the throbbing raised left hand. We woke up at a lock. According to the map, it must have been Lower Granite Dam. That means that we went through Little Goose Dam during the night without hearing a thing!
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| Tidewater grain barge at loading dock |
