Sunday, July 21 We had tickets to the rodeo, known as 'The Daddy of em All' , and we drove and parked near the grounds, since I now know my way around town. It was a noon start, and it was a great rodeo. After cutting our teeth on some smaller rodeos since we've been on this trip, we really appreciated the elevated quality of the cowboys and animals in this one. The rodeo we saw in Vernal, Utah was a good one, but this one is better, and it's supposed to be the best in the world. They had some different rules and some different events which made it more exciting to watch, and the crowd was huge. We had excellent seats, somehow, which made it nice too.
The next few videos are of the opening of the rodeo, the "Daddy of 'em all!" The first is all the girls that ride the ring with the sponsor flags.
Then they have the flags enter the track and then the rodeo queen and her lady in waiting
Then they have the "important people" like sponsors, etc.
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| Mike took some awesome rodeo pictures! This was bronc riding |
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| This horse did not want to be ridden! |
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| Half way through the rodeo, they had the important people (sponsors) ride by again |
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| Yee haw!!! |
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| Buddy and Pam enjoying the rodeo |
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| Team roping - one cowboy ropes the horns and the other ropes the hind hoof |
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| Steer wrestling |
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| Bull riding! This bull was not happy! |
This guy was a champion stunt roper, pistol juggler and bull whip stuntman
The following three videos are from the wild horse race. There are teams of three. One holds the wild horse by the rope, one hugs the horse around the next, and the third guy must saddle the bronc and then ride it all around the half mile track - the correct way! Enjoy the videos, it was the most hysterical thing I've ever seen!
After the rodeo was over, we kicked around the grounds for a while, ate fattening, expensive food, and saw a great Indian dance presentation in the Indian village. By that time, the concert crowd was beginning to roll in, and we noticed tickets were plentiful and cheap, so we scalped three ten dollar tickets and saw Dwight Yocum. I had seen him before at Jamboree in the Hills, and wasn't impressed, but he redeemed himself with a good show. Pam and Buddy knew very few of his songs, and I'm not sure how much they enjoyed him, but it was a nice summer night, and I was glad we decided to hang around.
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| This is little Norman, the littlest Indian dancing! |
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| He was adorable! |
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| Entrance dance, when all the dancers enter. |
July 21- 35.18 in 2:57. -I decided to start the day off with a ride into town to pick up the mail, which I had a friend forward to us, and Buddy decided to run (like run on foot) to Colorado. That is not as daunting a task as it sounds, because our campground is right on the Wyoming/Colorado border. It took us a few days to realize this fact, but as soon as you leave the campground, if you turn left, the road turns to a dirt road in less than 1000 ft. When it turns to dirt, that is Colorado. My ride was the other direction, and once I got into Cheyenne, I had to explore the Far East side of town to find the post office. I picked up the box of mail, strapped it to the handle bars of the bike, and pretended I was the pony express delivering mail across the plains of Wyoming while I was headed home. Even though I rode mostly on the same roads I did the other day, it was a much easier, more pleasant ride. The temps and sunshine were perfect, instead of having storms all around. I actually had a decent tailwind on the way home, instead of a headwind both directions. To illustrate how much the wind affects a bike, a hill that I rode down at 30 mph the other day, I hit 41.5 mph on it today.
After we all got cleaned up, we once again headed to the Frontier Days Stadium, for the Professional Championship Bull Riding Series. These were the top 24 bull riders in the world, well, mostly from Texas, with three from Brazil, and a few from other states like Louisiana , S. Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. They had installed their own, smaller arena, and they put on quite a show, with loud music, fireworks, entertaining announcers, but most of all, the biggest, baddest, nastiest bulls in the world. The bulls mostly won the battles, but there were two or three cowboys that had it under control. Mostly though, the bulls ruled. This fact was illustrated by one quote from the announcer. After a bull stomped and head butted one cowboy, he said: "the bad news is that he is knocked unconscious , but the good news is that we have a great medical staff! " They carted him off, and that was the last we saw of him, but an update medical report that they gave said that he was okay, except for some vision issues, so he wasn't going to ride his second bull. We are becoming bull riding fans, but I don't think the rodeo transfers to television too well, so it would be harder to watch when it's not live.
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| The pro championship bull riding was too exciting to take pictures. BUT, before the the competition, we went behind the shoots and watched them herd the feisty bulls into the chutes. |
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