Cowboys, Cowboys, and Cowboys!

After dropping Baylee and Zori into a fabulous doggy day care right next to the RV park we headed downtown.
We made it to the Calgary Stampede in about 45 minutes. We had to negotiate through heavy traffic in downtown Calgary, but fortunately we were disconnected from the airstream! Signage on the roads here is not quite the same (major understatement)!

Spent the first two hours wandering through the Stampede which is very similar in appearance to a State Fair, including all the good foods like hotdogs, deep fried Oreos, deep fried cheesecake, and the like.  We managed to stay away from everything but the hotdogs!!  Fortunately, we hit upon the beer garden fairly quickly so felt right at home! Massive amounts of people in attendance as the photo to the right shows - and thats less than half of the stadium!

The rodeo kicked off with cowboys competing on the bucking broncos.... absolutely amazingly fabulous to watch, but what a heck of a sport they compete in. Seriously I would be in hospital after been thrown around like them - but even the ones that got thrown off dusted themselves off and looked mighty fine walking away!

Then some of the same guys competed on the
bulls, a seriously dangerous sport! The arena is filled with cowboys just out there to protect the riders if and when they are thrown off - nothing serious happened but it was scary to watch!

The Rodeo ended with the ladies coming out and competing in Barrel Racing.  Beautiful horses, incredible skills - we cheered til we were hoarse - so to speak!!

Fabulous day, very hot, exhausted - back again tomorrow for the evening show!  Phew..... this is hard work!!