09 July - Saturday - Calgary (Stampede Day)

G'day All

Yeehaa...! It's time to cowboy up and head to the Calgary Stampede.

We met up with Megan, one of Oliver's life long friends and caught the train into town which was interesting as the train runs south to the city between the lanes of the highway, literally travelling with and between the traffic. Even through the city centre they share the roads, stopping at traffic lights for car traffic much like our trams but it's a train!

The stampede is much like a very large Brisbane Ekka or Sydney Royal Easter show but much much bigger, running for 10 days with a rodeo and an evening show each day with millions in prize money. We went all over and experienced as much as we could from the Indian village, some of the crazy foods, rodeo and chuck wagon racing. Due to the crowds I only took the point and shoot and ran out of battery towards the end of the night but wasn't worried as it was all about the experience.

We dressed as best we could as cowboy and cowgirl for the day.

The food, yes I did get to taste some of the weird stuff, and to be honest it wasn't that bad really. Mostly the deep fried coffee and tequila shots were flavoured doughnuts and the fruit infused cheese toastie was coloured cheese...

Top: Deep Fried Coffee, Middle: Tequila shots and Bottom: me digging into the rainbow cheese.

 Interesting to hear the Native Indian's singing and seeing the traditional dancing.

Other things we saw and some fun along the way...

A new belt buckle for work?

 

Those special Father Daughter moments . . .

The girls decided to head home early and leave me to the rodeo and stage show and I caught the train home later about 9 pm. It had rained lightly at the stampede as the girls left at around 4 pm but back at Samantha's it actually hailed a lot of pea sized hail and was quite a storm. Hail had piled up like snow everywhere and lightning also took out traffic lights and as I found out later also the train signals. When I jumped on the train I only got about two stations out of the city before it became a stop start crawl  home with a train swap thrown in for good measure. What was meant to be a 25 min run turned into about an hour 25 mins meaning it was again another late night. All in all another memorable day. 

Cheers

Gary and Penny