Pendleton, OR: Wildhorse Resort & Casino

Kenyon and I had a really good time in Pendelton, OR on our weekend getaway to Wildhorse Resort & Casino.

 

Wildhorse is on an Indian reservation.  While there is lots of gambling available, usually there isn’t any alcohol.  In this case there were bars and drinks for purchase.  Unlike Vegas they don’t give you free drinks for gambling.  I knew Kenyon would like Wildhorse because there is free soda pop and they had Diet Dr. Pepper in the fountain.  So, he was a happy camper.  There were really great prices on food at the restaurants on the property and the town of Pendleton is pretty close if you wanted to venture to town for other food options. 

We arrived on Tuesday evening about 9:30pm Oregon time and checked into our hotel.  We chose a higher end room in the non-smoking tower and were really happy about our choice.  Being on graveyard and planning to stay up all night, we picked a room that had a separate living room area.  We also wanted a nice big bathtub.  It turns out the bathtub was not as big as the photos make it out to be.
 

 

We didn’t spend much time in our room.  There wasn’t much on TV and the gambling was downstairs!  We did like having the ability to come/go as we pleased and that our room had a coffee maker, microwave, and mini fridge.

Our first night/day gambling at Wildhorse was pretty good.  We both were losing pretty quickly and I was sad that the money we brought to gamble with might be gone after the first day.  Thankfully I hit some good luck and found a few machines to pay out so we could at least have money to gamble with the second day.
 

 

We had a quick late night bite to eat at the Sports Bar.  Indian Tacos for the win!  When you are in the land of fry bread, you must have some.  It was delicious.

 

We called it quits around 2am and on Wednesday morning woke up on around 11am.  Breakfast at Wildhorse ends at 11am so we knew we would have to venture into Pendleton for something to eat.  Kenyon found good reviews on Main Street Diner.

 

Notice how the menu says “fast food”?  Yeah well that isn’t accurate.  It was the slowest and least friendly service ever.  I would not recommend that Main Street Diner in Pendleton.  I ordered the breakfast sandwich and was surprised to see it was real ham.  I am slightly picky with my ham in that I don’t like all the fatty bits.  But it was still good.  Too bad the service sucked.

 

We headed back to Wildhorse to do some gambling to pass the afternoon.  Once again our money stash started to dwindle fast.  I was thinking we were going to have to quit and then I won big on a penny machine.  YahoooHooo!  We were back in business.

 

We had an early dinner at the buffet and then I took a nap.  We decided to head back down and lose more money that evening.  Boy did our money go quick.  It was amazing how fast it goes.  We were pretty much tapped out in the money category about midnight.  I told Kenyon if we did anymore gambling I wanted to go to the blackjack tables.  I had gone earlier and played for quite a while on $20 finally cashing out with my same $20 in the end.  We spent over an hour at the blackjack tables gambling with only $20 each.  We met several dealers and enjoyed visiting with each of them.  We ended up calling it quits around 2am on Thursday morning.  I still had $20 and Kenyon had $7.  Not too shabby.

Check-out time was 11am so we woke up at 9:30am so we would be prepared in time.  We were able to get some breakfast at the Hotrock Café before they stop serving.  I ended up having dessert after breakfast because the ice cream shop was open before we left.  I missed it the night before.  I picked the salted caramel with Oregon hazelnut.  It was Tillamook brand and delicious.

 

It was also very large and I was full from breakfast.  I ended up throwing it out the window along I-84 as we headed out of Pendleton.  We passed a hitchhiker on the freeway.  We could have pulled over and offered it to him.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Even though we didn’t win big allowing us to retire early, we had a great time.  The Wildhorse Resort & Casino is just three hours from Boise.  I can totally see us getting out of town on occasion when we need our Vegas fix.