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