Pendleton Woolen Mills

I intentionally scheduled some time in Pendleton on our way through because I wanted to stop (again) at the Pendleton Woolen Mills. I think the first visit may have been before BJ and I were married and we don't have enough fingers and toes together to count that high.

But this visit, I'm going to blame on my river friend, Greg, who used Pendleton blankets instead of a sleeping bag on our Grand Canyon / Colorado River trip this past March. By the way, my Facebook friends know this, but Greg wrote three wonderful blog posts for the Pendleton blog about our trip. You can access them here (1st), here (2nd), and here (3rd).

I stopped by the shirt racks for a moment while BJ headed to the ladies side of the store,

but our real target was blankets. We started in the Outlet shop (behind the retail shop) where we were fortunate to find it was old folks Tuesday. Actually, I believe they called it Senior Discount Tuesday, but you get the idea. We looked at the National Park series, but keep gravitating towards the Jacquard blankets with Native American motifs.

We ended up with a Chief Joseph in forest green and one from the Eddie Bauer collection that I couldn't find on their website. Lots of fun, and no, I'm not planning to take these on river trips.

Since we were there at the right time, we even did the mill tour. Noisy, but interesting. All the way from carding the wool to making the yard to weaving the fabric and inspecting it. The battery in the camera died, so this one is a cell phone photo.

It's a great stop if you're in NE Oregon. You can do the same at their Washougal Mill in Washougal, WA if you're in the Portland area.