YaHoo! The Calgary Stampede - Day 1

On Friday, July 5 we got up and headed south to Calgary for the Stampede. We had tickets to the rodeo that started at 1:15am and wanted to look around beforehand. We found a parking lot across the street from the main entrance and after we paid through the nose (which I think included our first born) we headed into the Stampede grounds. My first agenda was to purchase a "Stampede 101: Hell or High Water" t-shirt before they were sold out. Driving down to Calgary and seeing the devastation of the flood was mind boggling. And seeing how well the Stampede grounds looked, you knew that it took a lot of people working very long hours to get them that way.

Main Entrance

This is what it looked like at about 11:30am - blue sky, few clouds and about 65 degrees - perfect. We headed into the grandstands around 12:45pm, found our seats in section 220, row HH, seats 114 & 115 and were relieved to see we were out of the sun and under cover.

Our view taken with the big lens.

The rodeo started with a little show of freestyle motorcross bikes - a 15-year old (in red), a 35-year old (in blue) and Evil Knievel's godson (in white) :).

And then the rodeo began, first with a branding of the arena dirt with CS and then with the entrance of the competitors.

For the next 3 hours we were totally entertained and loved every minute of the rodeo! I think we took almost 800 pictures between the 2 days of the rodeo and I am still in the process of downloading them so I'll try to get them up (not all 800!) as soon as I can.

After the rodeo we decided to go into an indoor show of SuperDogs where I'm pretty sure we were the oldest people in there! The show lasted about an hour and so as we were leaving the building around 5:30pm, there was a huge backup at the door leading outside. We couldn't figure out what was happening until we saw outside....it was pouring down rain! Not just a little Oregon shower, but an all out downpour. I think everyone at the Stampede took cover in the BMO Centre (building where all the vendors were like at the State Fair). It was wall to wall people. So we decided to go ahead and leave and find somewhere for dinner in Calgary. When we got to the parking lot where the truck was, there was already a mud puddle in the center of the lot that was half way up the tires on some cars. After the flooding, the water just doesn't have anywhere else to go. We heard later that they closed a road and neighborhoods were flooding again. We made it to The Keg and it was delicious - prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes - yum!

We got back to Canmore and the campground around 9:30pm and were ready for day 2 of the Stampede where we had tickets to the evening Grandstand Show. I'll write that post later, but for now here are some pictures that I've downloaded so far....