First Nations, the real Wild West

Remember that it was a mere 150 or so years ago that European
settlers trod the earth here. Horses played a key role for all
that survived, lived and thrived in these lands.

Eagle feather dance bustle, 1940-1950 pictured above.
Henry Thompson (this First Nations indian here) was especially fond of the red, white and yellow colours
because they reminded him of the sun. He believed the sun was the source of all life & celebrated this belief on
certain occasions by painting red and yellow dots on his face.

Main Street, Shasta (Oregon state) at turn of 1900. A freight team is coming towards the camera heading to
Redding, while other freight waggons are headed towards Whiskeytown & Weaverville.

Stampede Yehaw!

This year (2012) Calgary in July celebrated it's 100th Stampede and the whole city was whooping up a party. It's a 2 week period where de-rigour is wearing your cow boy/girl hat and boots at any time, anywhere. There are often free breakfasts served all over town and parties/social events happening all over the place. We bought tickets for the Stampede event itself (famous for it's Rodeo). We cycled downtown to the stampede showground on a very hot day, though at any time it could rain and it did too that day but only for a short while. 

We really enjoyed the day, some highlights here if Mark's not already added his pics too.

• got our steampunk hats
• Mark calmed agitated horse using Tellington Touch
• Mark got close to a military robot
• excellent Tails rodeo story show
• listening/watching through open doorway live county music outside the venue while watching the 5 hour queue waiting to get in (I'm no sucker!)
• bypassing the queueing cars as we cycled right to the entrance

Linzi dressed up for the day

Skies darken in a threatening way ready for thunder storm. Just like a Harry Potter film Dementors hovering overhead.

The Blacksmiths international competition. Even had competitor from the UK. They had to make a horse shoe from a block of metal after only looking at the hoof for a few seconds, no touching or measuring, They had 25mins to make the shoe. Quite exciting, all buzzin and clanking. This was the World Championship!

'Tails' was a live show based around 3 horses and how the stampede came about. As you see here the 3 horse friends.

Rounding up cattle, rodeo style