September 15th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part VI

This chapter is also known as Failure, Yet Again!

Not that it really ended up too bad, and we not only saw it coming, but were OK with it, but waking up the next morning in The Rugged Country Lodge, it was still a bit of a bitter pill to realize that we'd once again put a good amount of effort, time and money prepping for another failure. Of course, we still had to actually go to the bank and talk to Kris, but we were pretty sure that nothing would come of it.

We got up and greeted the surprisingly brisk morning, and ate some decent, but unimpressive breakfast in the Rooster Room, and checked out. It was still a bit until our meeting, so we parked at the bank, and wandered around downtown for a half hour or so, anxious and nervous, despite being pretty consigned to our inevitable outcome.

At 9am sharp, we wandered to the bank just as Kris was unlocking it. She introduced herself and shook our hands, guiding us into a conference room. Kris chatted with us for a while, telling us that she had been quite excited to meet us, and had been working on our project since we talked. She knew we had virtually nothing in the way of a down payment and had arranged for a gentleman to come in and talk to us about helping finance the RCL, what some people refer to as Angels. I suddenly got a little nervous that this might actually go through. Kris seemed incredibly confident in the Angel, and was really excited to look over our plans. We explained our intent to add some romantic themed rooms and she told us that she had visited a few like that in a different city and loved it, she got even more excited as we elaborated on our future plans to overhaul the website and the image of the Lodge, turning it into a locals spot as well as quality lodging for travelers. Just as we were about to go further into detail, showing her the business plan we'd written up, the Angel arrived.

Sweeping into the room, he shook our hands firmly and sat at the head of the table. He introduced himself and what he did, which was essentially be the bag man for investors, a kind of local Small Business Loan Association, and proceeded to mention the people he worked for, or knew. Now Pendleton is a pretty small city, around 16,000 people, and apparently the people he named were pretty big wigs there, but to us, they were just names, and while we tried to seem impressed, it wasn't easy. Shockingly, he went on for another 10 minutes, name dropping in a vastly important manner. Finally, he got to the nitty gritty and explained to us that he'd looked into the Motel, and that it looked like a great property, and he was interesting in assisting with the financing. We would just need to gather up our credit report, business plan, $70,000.00, a couple of worksheets, pack some bags and we'd be on our way to owning a motel! We kindly asked him to back up a bit, just in case we misheard him, $70,000.00 you say? The Angel nodded solemnly. "You do have at least that much, don't you?" he asked. Across the table, Kris' eyes were huge, she had obviously not seen that number coming either, and she seemed like she was pretty pissed off. "No, not even close to that, sir" we said. He looked at us and said, serious as a heart attack, "Well, you probably know someone you can borrow it from. Borrow it from your parents." Clearly, he was under the mistaken impression that Lindsay's parents who own a little local record store, and my mother, a divorced kindergarten teacher, made ridiculous amounts of money and could easily peel a thousand C-notes off of their rolls to help out their kids. Maybe my mom should have taught school in Pendleton! We tactfully and somewhat incredulously informed him that we really didn't know anyone that could help us, that's why we were talking to him. Kris, seeing our obvious gobsmackery, quickly started closing things up, gathering the Angel of Death's paperwork and handing them to us, telling him that she wanted to talk with us about our options, and we would most certainly be getting ahold of him soon, as she could clearly find an extra 70k chilling in our offseas account, don't you worry none, you betcha!

After the Angel swept out of the room, the papers on the table rustling like leaves in his wake, Kris deflated. Clearly she had thought him to be our savior, a cowboy in a white hat, bursting in with guns blazing, spurs jingling, and moneybags overflowing and instead he came in, twirled his moustache diabolically and foreclosed on the family farm. She apologized profusely, and attempted to fill us with hope that she would find a way for us to get the property, promising to get in touch with us and explain our options. We were told to not give up hope!

We never heard from Kris again. Really, as we climbed back in to Strontium, to begin the long drive back to Pocatello, we felt sorry for Kris and the Cowboy Angel. Kris, because she had been SO CERTAIN of our success, to the extent that some of the papers I glimpsed in her hands looked pretty clearly to be preliminary purchasing worksheets, and instead the Angel had been exactly what we assumed he would be. A businessman, not an Angel. A Businessman is never going to go out on a limb and loan two "kids" thousands of dollars for a business, regardless of their vision and drive. We knew this and it's the main ROUS we've struggled with since day one. We don't have rich parents (Though Lindsay's dad is named Rich...) and we don't have some secret Ace up our sleeve. All we have is our vision, some management and hotel experience and whole hell of a lot of drive, motivation and energy. All we have to do is find someone that believes in us and those qualities to do them right, not in the almighty dollar.

As we drove home, we also started feeling really sorry for the Businessman. He was someone that was clearly successful, well off, but at the same time, he seemed kind of sad to us. He placed such a large amount of importance on dropping names of big people in the city, and then seemed kind of crushed when we weren't awed by them. We love little towns, absolutely LOVE them, but Pendleton had a strange feel to it, like instead of this crazy little western town in a valley like it was, it seemed like some odd subdivision full of gossipy housewives.
We tipped our hats to Pendleton, and The Rugged Country Lodge (or the Silver Rose, as we had considered changing its name to...) and headed towards the rising sun.

If you ever pass through Pendleton, Oregon you should stay at The Rugged Country. The staff is friendly, they have fresh cookies in the lobby, and as long as you don't read the mildly creepy "About Me" letters in the room book, it's utterly charming! You can visit them here.


If you're looking for a genuine bed and breakfast, you couldn't choose a better one than the Riverwalk B&B.

Other points of interest in Pendleton:

The Underground Tour - An absolute GEM. I'll have to do a post on this later, I love it SO much!

The Pendleton Woolen Mills - They have a great store and museum here. Eventually I'm buying a nice wool greatcoat from them. They'll last forever.

The Wildhorse Resort and Casino - I couldn't begin to tell you how to get there, but I've heard they have some good grub!



As we drove home, we stopped at the Hungry Redneck Cafe again, and ate our fill of some excellent diner food and a berry pie that was almost as good as their strawberry. We also formulated our plot for our next step, something that had slowly climbed its way into our consciousness over the last couple of days..... Something exciting, and a little closer to home.....

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part V

Lindsay and I have always had a hard time deciding on where to eat so we asked Mike where a good, non-chain place was and he recommended the Casino. I'd eaten at a few casinos before and was pretty impressed with their food, but Lindsay was kind of leery. Eventually, we decided to head there and took off East. Now, as we travel, my wife and I are notorious for getting lost. It's not that we're adverse to asking directions so much as we're really bad at following them and in a way, we kind of enjoy the adventure of it. One time we got lost for around 5 hours, ended up in a different state than we had been in previously and scared our family to death, but the gravel road I took eventually led us back to civilization. This trip was no exception and I managed to blow clean past the Casino and ended up heading back towards Idaho, weaving up a gorgeous mountainside with absolutely no way of getting to the lanes heading the other direction.

However, at the top, we did stop at a viewpoint and I snapped off a few photos in the dying light.

Farmland and desert, not something that springs to mind when people mention Oregon

Somewhere out there is Pendleton, OR....

Or maybe its out this direction....

At any rate I eventually found a way back to the interstate heading West back into Pendleton, upon which we blew clean past the Casino again, around Pendleton and ended up on the opposite end of town. We stopped in for a soda at a gas station and noticed a pizza joint across the street, so we headed there. We ordered a Greek pizza of some sort with grilled feta and chicken and some breadsticks, and decided to head back to the Rugged Country, and book a room. We paid full price and got a single in the basement and settled in to eat some pizza, which turned out to be quite excellent, and discuss our thoughts.

After a lot of talking, we decided that the RCL would not work for us. Not only was it much larger than we wanted, but there wasn't really any easy way to live there, especially with our dogs. We would have needed to commandeer a couple of rooms above the office, and to get the dogs to the backyard would have been an ordeal. We were still very confident that if we took over and converted a few of the rooms to more romantic, specialized rooms, we could attract the bored, stranded locals, and really increase our income, but we were pretty sure that it would be a LOT of work, and that we wouldn't enjoy living there much. However, it was a step that would make us enough money to move on to our dream place, so we didn't discount it completely, We decided to wait and talk to Kris at the bank the next day. The bed was pretty comfy, though I can't say I
"Dreamed Soft" like their logo wanted me to. Their shower was hot too, and while the shower head wasn't at full height, it didn't hit me in the belly button like a lot of other hotels either.

All in all, a pretty full and busy day. We really enjoyed meeting and spending it with Mike, and while we weren't utterly enchanted with Pendleton, we decided we could learn to enjoy it's unique mix of small town & wild west craziness. The Rugged Country Lodge was a great motel, well run, clean, unique in the city, and quite frankly, too good for us as a first attempt. That knowledge would make us less nervous the next morning, as we met the bank people......

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part IV

The Rugged Country Lodge
With a view of the far cheaper and trashier motel across the street.

Finally, we arrived at The Rugged Country Lodge to tour the place. We met the current caretaker.... whose name I forgot.... for the purposes of this blog, we'll pretend like it was Mary. My wife will undoubtedly remind me of her name after she reads this.... Mary introduced herself and we talked for a while. She told us that the current owners of the RCL were friends of hers, and she was essentially helping them out by running the motel, though it was immediately obvious that she held a great deal of affection for the place, and ran it like a big mother hen.

The exterior of the lodge.... apparently I failed to get any full photos of the exterior of the building

We chatted in a room off of the office, kind of a small lobby area with a couch and chair. Off of it was the "commercial kitchen" featuring some nice appliances, and an ice maker. Mary talked about the cookies they bake, and how it would need to have a second sink installed soon.

The Kitchen

Off of the sitting room, there was also a small bedroom, with a country style quilt. We were sort of surprised to see it off of what was clearly used as an employee gathering area, and it turned out that the area we were in was considered the "manager's quarters".

The Manager's Quarters... such as they were....

This was a bit disappointing, as the RCL was clearly too large to run by ourselves, and if we lived there, we would have employees in and out all of the time, as the access to the kitchen, dining room, restroom and hall were all through there.

The Office. To the rear and left is the entrance to the Manager's Quarters.

Starting our tour, we passed through their small, but efficient office, and headed over to the Rooster Room, where they served breakfast.

Rise and shine in the Rooster Room!

The Rooster room was nice, Mary took a lot of pride in the country decor, and had Cowboy'd it up in honor of the Round Up, which we had just caught the tail end of.

Bandannas and Bananas for breakfast!

The RCL served a pretty nice expanded continental breakfast with waffles, biscuits, and some pretty phenomenal little yogurts.

We toured an example of each of the room types, which were all clean and nice, though a bit generic.

Single w/ Hide-a-bed

They all suffered from what I call PDS (Plopped Down Syndrome) where at some point in the past, they decided each room needed a fridge and microwave, so they bought a bunch and plopped them down in a corner somewhere, without making any effort to make them blend in or look good. A lot of motels suffer from PDS. The rooms did however, feature excellent artwork, prints by Albert Bierstadt, one of my personal favorites, and other western artists.

PDS in action, with added coffeemaker!

They also put a little sprig of (really dry) lavender and some bath salts on each pillow. A nice, if somewhat half hearted gesture.

I did like that the bedspreads were slightly less generic than usual.

The bathrooms were really quite nice too, with real tiles, decent towels and supplies, and pedestal sinks (which Mary and Mike kept raving about, though they seemed to leave Lindsay and I unaffected... maybe it's a Pendleton thing...)

We liked the towel rack, but got tired of seeing it after the 7th room....

They did all have the same fixtures and layouts too, in fact most of the rooms we saw were pretty indistinguishable, apart from the number of beds.



Then came the fun part for me, a tour of the guts of the operation, the stuff normal people never get to see.

A Staircase. Typically used to ascend or descend from one floor to another. Also for stumbling down while drunk.

Their laundry room was really quite nice, and very "large hotel" designed with a full industrial washer, separate folding room and a nice cleaning supply system. Frankly, this was pretty daunting for us, and one of the first signs that this place was a lot larger scale than we really wanted.

Yikes. Intimidating washing machine alert!

The backyard was pretty generic, and barely qualified as a yard at all, more just a strip behind the building, but had some potential for the dogs and a little barbecue.

Potential seen, but not too thrilling.

After touring the facility, we sat with Mary and chatted for quite a while, about her history, the RCL, hospitality in general and Pendleton. It was actually a really great talk, we learned a few things, and it was really kind of fun to watch Mary and Mike talk, as both ran very different types of hospitality businesses in town, one had been doing it for quite a while, and the other was just starting. It was cool to see the way their different outlooks affected their opinion of their jobs and the city. After a while, we decided it was time to get going. We thanked Mary, asked her about a few good places to eat, and told her we might be back for a room later that evening. We headed back to Mike's, told him we'd call the next day, and headed into Pendleton to experience the city's post-rodeo hospitality, find some grub, and discuss what we thought about the Rugged Country Lodge....

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part III

Getting back on track here...


Before heading to the Rugged Country, Mike took us on a brief tour around the historic section of houses by his, dishing the inside dirt on what they cost, what improvements had been done, which ones were in a sad state of disrepair, before we headed to an alternate property to look at. He prefaced it by saying that it most likely wouldn't work for what we wanted, but it was an unusual structure, and he thought we might like to see it. Obviously, Mike had gotten the wholly accurate impression that we like odd things and challenges.

He brought us to this building, a somewhat unassuming office building on a corner just a few blocks from the main drag.
From the outside, it was pretty average looking, just a few offices along the street, and a couple of garage bays on the side. Where it got intriguing was from the inside. The entire ground floor, with the exception of the offices along the street was an underground style parking garage.

Over to the side there were two staircases as well, one leading into the depths of a basement area, which we didn't explore unfortunately, and one leading upwards, to an open courtyard surrounded by offices that opened into it. It was kind of a strange setup, but it had kind of a cool feel to it, like you were in some strange urban secret garden.

With a lot of work, and we mean a LOT of work, we could have possibly transformed the place into a neat little motel & wedding site, with a downstairs reception hall/dance floor, a small rooftop garden, and few rental suites. We decided it wasn't worth the effort unless we stumbled across the place for a song, and as no one seemed to be serenading us, we moved on to the Rugged Country. A fun little place nonetheless!

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part II

Arriving in the neighborhood a bit early, we drove around the Riverwalk area, admiring all of the old homes. Nearly every building in the neighborhood had a lot of character, we wanted to barge in and tour all of them. Luckily, a few minutes later, at Mike's, we got to do just that.
Mike's house was amazing. Situated on the corner, the B&B has a great view of the downtown, and a spacious wrap around porch. We did run into a bit of consternation at his door however, unsure of the typical procedure when visiting a bed and breakfast. It's someones house, but also a business. Do you waltz on in, or ring the doorbell? After a bit of discussion, we decided to ring. We also made a note that if we ever have a B&B, to have some sort of sign or plaque on the door informing guests of our preferences, maybe a nice plaque with "Come on in!" on one side and "Please Ring" on the other, or something. At any rate, Mike met us at the door, and introduced us to his wife, their adorable dog Charlie, and himself.

It's interesting how many people we've met online or over the phone since we started this quest, and how most of them differ in person from their online and phone personas. As I'm sure it's a shock to people meeting us for the first time in person. I'm 30, but look closer to 25 or 26, and my wife looks significantly younger than that. I'm also very wordy when I "talk" online, but after years of running phone surveys during high school, I despise the phone, and I'm typically quite reserved on the phone unless I know the person well. However, Mike was pretty much exactly how we'd pictured him, very friendly and smart. He looked like a Math Teacher/Realtor/B&B Owner would look, if you can believe it.

After introductions and some dog cuddles, he gave us a tour of his excellent home. Built in 1912 by Gustav Stickley, Mike has spent a lot of time slowly renovating and renewing the place. He tore literally tons of old shingles off of the roof, exposing cool old tin signs and shingles from the original construction, and is slowly working to restore all of the old woodwork and decor from the era. He essentially runs the B&B "As an excuse for living in an amazing home" and when he's done working on it, he'll certainly have it! The upper floor boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and a couple of older nooks and crannies, like a linen closet. Each of his rooms are named after Oregon rivers, and following suit, he cheekily named the bathrooms after rivers too, calling them the "Powder River" and the "John Day River" I think this is hilarious. His wife and he sleep in the master bed on the main floor, and he proudly showed off the perfect hardwoods in the floor and the great decor, followed by his misadventures installing the bath next to the bedroom. He gave us a tour of the dining room and kitchen, their next major project, outlining his plans to gut it of the flowery 60's details and adding some sleek new appliances. He seemed pretty excited about the B&B, having just experienced his first Round-Up as proprietors, and he told us some great stories about his guests. We really enjoyed his tour, and loved his attitude about his business, and his dedication to restoring the great old house he lives in.

After jabbering for a while and admiring the leaded windows that looked out over the porch (which I was quite jealous of) we realized the time and left for the motel, along with a couple of other places he wanted to show us.

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR

Pendleton, OR

As one drives to Pendleton, OR. you can't help wonder at the work it took for people to travel here and establish cities. The sheer distance between places has always been pretty awe inspiring to me, and between Pocatello and Pendleton, there's a lot of nothing punctuated by the rare scrub brush or farm. (Including a huge tree farm, that has always intrigued Lindsay and I, both what the trees are used for, and how hypnotic they are to drive past, all the same sized trees in perfect rows...) There's one section of the road, just before you reach the Indian reservation outside of Pendleton where the road circles up and down a mountain, and at the top, there's a little lookout station, that gives you a view of the valley below. I always get nostalgic there, wondering what it was like before "civilization" came to the west.


Pendleton is a very charming little western city. The downtown area in particular is quite nice, with gorgeous old houses and big brick buildings along the main street. One of the things we really like about Pendleton is the way they celebrate their history. Their underground tours, something I'll have to do a separate post on sometime is a singular pleasure, and something I wish Pocatello, with similar tunnels and history would have embraced.

As we arrived in Pendleton, we decided to cruise past it, and check out the Rodeo City Motel, one of the places for sale that we considered looking at.

The Rodeo City Motel

To put it mildly, The Rodeo City was a dump. Apart from it's name, which I found clever, there were no redeeming qualities about the place whatsoever. Broken down cars, beer bottles, and a clientele that quite frankly, were creepy! Our first sign that Mike was looking out for our best interests here in Pendleton.

A Bed & Breakfast/Catering service (whose name I've forgotten...)

After we fled in terror from the Rodeo City, we spent a very pleasant morning just driving casually around Pendleton.

One thing we love about Pendleton is the abundant old churches. While my wife and I aren't big church goers, we love old buildings, and between the houses by the river and the churches scattered across the area, we had plenty to enjoy.

We arrived after the last day of the Round-Up, and Pendleton was just starting to slowly empty out, and everywhere we looked there were signs of the population-tripling crowd they get everywhere. It was interesting to see that while some businesses obviously capitalized on the rodeo, some took that opportunity to flee the town, closing up shop and going fishing for the week rather than deal with the insanity.

Pendleton's Charming downtown.


Their faux wooden sidewalks

Around 1, we headed to Mike's house, and Bed & Breakfast, to meet him before visiting the locations he'd chosen. While we weren't overly optimistic about Pendleton, and our chances there, we were looking forward to looking at the Rugged Country, and chatting with Mike, who
seemed like a very friendly and enjoyable person.

If you look closely, you can see Mike's B&B just to the left of the pink house, another B&B in Pendleton.