Ellensburg Rodeo

Yesterday I got to go to a rodeo courtesy of someone at work who bought a spare ticket. We started off at 7:20 for a two hour drive east across the mountains and to Ellensburg. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the mountains - I'll have to take some another time. In addition I had to take the photos on my phone and this was one of those days when a zoom lens was needed - these should at least give you a flavour...

the other side of the mountains

We got to Ellensburg for about 9:30am so we could watch the parade. It started with a local fire engine...

I may have been singing 'High School Musical' songs to myself at this point...

A marching band - I was impressed with the conducter walking backwards

Representatives of the Yakama Indian Nation

The county fair had small and large livestock competitions including chickens

This mare had her foal with her in the parade

Ferris Wheel and Cotton Candy

Circle Dance

At this point various groups of riders were being introduced and
weaving backwards and forwards across the rodeo area.

Bareback riders

another bareback rider

Rider dismounting by moving onto the back someone
elses horse whilst both horses we galloping 

The aim of this was to grab the calf, turn it over and rope
three of it's legs together to secure it. Seconds later the calves
were up and running off to the other side of the arena.

I can't remember what the point of this was but it basically
involved wrestling the come to bull ground, maybe that was the point?

Mexican Rope Slinger on the horse with the long mane,
and his wife on the super clever sitting horse. 

This time they had saddles of some kind

some of the breeding stock

Working in pairs to rope the back and front of the cows

This was fun to watch ... 1) rope the cow

2) your partner runs in and...

3) wrestles the cow 

4) wrestles the cow for a long time

5) eventually both partners get on the ground and the one
that roped the cow milks it!

Bull riding

we only saw a couple of people close to getting trampled by
the bull. One guy must have been right under it's hooves but
he still stood up and walked away

Sometimes the bulls didn't want to go back into the stalls

this one was particularly stubborn

it took three or four ropes to get his out of the arena

so we had a good day and no-one was hurt - phew!

We ended the day with ice cream - cotton candy
ice cream and huckleberry ice cream - yum

Overall impressions it wasn't quite as violent a I thought it might be and it was good fun. I didn't get the feeling any of the animals were particularly worried by the experience, except the bulls who probably just live in a perpetual bad mood. It was a shame we didn't have a bit more time to look around the fair but we were exhausted by the end of the rodeo anyway. 

Yesterday I went to another different church and got to stay for lunch. I hadn't got a corn dog from the fair which I regretted slightly - seemed like a typical american thing to do. There were corn dogs for the church lunch. God looks after the big things but he also looks after some of the little things too.