Ye-haw!

This weekend a bunch of us met in Calgary to experience the Stampede. Bill and Deanna drove out from Penticton. Lorna, my old roommate from Vancouver, flew out from Ireland, where she lives nowadays. She brought along Mike and Dave, a couple of her Irish friends. Rick drove out from Slave Lake to join us. We were lucky to be able to stay at Lorna's aunt's over the weekend. We set up our tents in her backyard and relaxed on the patio as everyone met each other and old friends caught up. Left to right: Bill, Rick, Mike.Garrett and Deanna.We headed down to the Stampede grounds on the C-train where we ate some over-priced hamburgers for dinner. Lorna, Dave and Mike sported their cowboy hats, purchased the day before.
Garrett and I joined them, cowboy-hatless at this point in time. We both purchased ourselves a cowboy hat the next day. There really isn't a better time to buy a cowboy hat than when you are at the Stampede!On Friday night we went to the chuckwagon races and Grandstand show. We had good seats and could see the entire track. I've never seen chuckwagon races before and was quite thrilled by the event, until one of the wagons crashed and the horses were hurt. It doesn't seem that dangerous but apparently one of the horses had a heart attack and brought the other horses down with it. Yikes.
The grandstand show after the race was incredibly cheesy. "We love Canada, Canada we love thee, Canada let's not be divided". Blech. Eventually they threw out some fireworks, cool acrobatics and an absolutely hilarious bag-piping comic. He played ACDC, Metallica, Van Halen and Star Wars on his bagpipes - it was awesome! After the show we headed home with thousands of other people, fought our way onto the C-train and ended up walking home once off at our station. The silly thing is that the train runs all night, but all other busses do not. We were all pretty tired once we eventually made it home.

The next day we hit up the rodeo. The rodeo was really fun - we saw bronc riding, cattle 'wrastling', barrel racing and bull riding! It was difficult to get any pictures where you can actually tell what is happening, but the one below is of the barrell racing. I took several of the bull riding, but the bull was either facing the wrong way or just too small to see anything interesting.We had to sit out in the hot sun for most of the rodeo, until the shade came our way, so our cowboy hats came in handy in keeping the sun off our heads. Here I am with the Sarah and Amanda.This is a nice one of Garrett and I wearing our cowboy hats. Good lookin' cowboy and cowgirl, hey?We spent some time in the 'Nashville North' beer garden, which is a large tent with continuous country bands, dancing and music. I managed to run into my old friend Kathy and her fiance, Jaime, in the beer garden.Here's our entire group, cowboy hats and all!Erik and I. Yea, tall Swedish guy.I also managed to meet up with my cousin, Samantha, her husband Mike and their daughter Taylor. We had a nice meal together and got caught up with each other since I saw them a few months ago.Lastly, the canola fields are all in bloom along the highway between Edmonton and Calgary, and I took many photos trying to catch the beauty of it. I wanted to show you all how nice the prairies can look, however the picture doesn't do it justice, since it's taken from afar in a moving car.Overall, the stampede was really fun but it's something you really only need to do once. I think next year we'll go to the rodeo in Edmonton instead, which is cheaper and just as fun to see.
P.S. Note the bandaid is gone! That's right, it's slowly getting better.