Pendleton Round Up 2010

The Pendleton Round Up is the crown of the year's parades for Fay, the biggest, the best. I was worried about this year, their 100th anniversary of the rodeo. I've a lot more imagination than Fay has. Just as well he doesn't, we're much better off with only one of us being high strung. 

There was supposed to be a new campground for teamsters, with all modern conveniences, ie, portapotties and stock water. There was even a shuttle advertised as available. 

The campground was a bare scraped acreage behind Walmart, stock water a quarter mile away, portapotties didn't show up until late Thursday night I'm told. The shuttle was a half mile away, and dropped folks at the Round Up ground's gate, leaving another quarter mile walk into the Teamster's barn. 

Neither one of us can walk that far. 

If it hadn't been for Billy Laurenzen, the parade manager, we wouldn't have been able to stay. He gave us his reserved parking spot on the Round Up grounds. In all of the chaos he had to deal with, he took the time to give away his parking spot, just to make sure one elderly teamster could stay for the parade. 

The sidewalks were packed, people were even up on the roofs of the buildings.