Stampede Parade & Rodeo

After all of our research the day before the morning of the parade went smooth as silk.  We left the campground at 6 o'clock am and got a parking place in the section of the lot that was not reserved for working people who buy monthly passes and caught the 6:30 train downtown.  The cost was only $2.75 one way per person so that was well worth not having the hassle of trying to drive and find a parking place down town.  We saw one lot that said parking $25 when we got down there.  We were not lucky enough to have Aunt Karen with all her "local knowledge" to get us right to the right spot on the parade route and home again in Calgary!!

We got to our rather rickety seats but they were in the shade and that was good.  The best thing about this parade was all of the entertainment they provided while you were waiting for the parade to come! There were lots of different dancing groups that just stopped right in front of you and performed.  We were toward the end of the parade so it really helped the time pass.

 White cowboy hats were for sale everywhere cheap so lots of people had them. Girls like this were going down the street and getting people to say "YAY" "HOO". Lots of them had two signs to coach the crowd.  I think that is Canadian for "YEEHAW"! like you would say at a rodeo or parade in America.

I was sad the Ukranian dancers stopped to perform a little further up the street but just seeing the costumes was fabulous.

This group of about 50 line dancers mostly older danced right in front of us.  I made Steve take a picture of this lady because she had white hair and looked like she was just having a ball. She was way into it and didn't even look tired even though she had already been coming down the parade route for at least an hour already.
One big group of square dancers stopped just down from us and poured off a flatbed trailer and grabbed people from the audience and a caller did a short dance with about 12 or 16 squares of people from the parade route mixed with the dancers who really knew what they were doing.  It was all very festive & fun.

These Scottish Dancers stopped right in front of us.  Some of them were as little as 5 or 6 yrs old and most of them had their socks woven of the same plaid as their skirts which I thought was very cool but there are no pictures of one with those kind of socks.  (I cannot complain about the pictures unless I am willing to start lugging a camera around to take the ones I want and I am not - so this is what we have!)



These dancers were my favorite.  The costumes were so fabulous with the fancy stitching and the little girls were so cute.  They were all wearing the funniest wigs that looked like they were made out of doll hair!

The parade itself was a little bit disappointing especially in the float catagory.  I do not think it stood up to billing itself as the second best parade after the Rose Parade.  But there were lots of cool horses and of course Indians or "First Nation People" as they call them up here.



This one was of course included because of the double diamond hitch on the pack saddles.  There were bands from lots of far away places in the states and Sweden and Australia and Thailand.  These are the pictures I was provided! We are not sure we would go to the parade again but it was good to say we have been.

As briefly described in an earlier blog the rodeo seats and the torrential downpour combined to prevent many good pictures.  But the rodeo was amazing in spite of that - the best stock and riders we have ever seen. All 8 contestants stayed on the bucking bulls!  I have never seen that happen before.

And at the end they had a fun event rather than mutton busting.  They had teams of 3 kids about age 10 to 12 years old compete in the "wild pony race".  The horses were small Shetland ponies and the kids had to work together to get a hold of the horse and then one had to ride it for two bucks and that was the time.  There was a rope on the pony that one or more of the kids had a hold of when they opened the chute.  The first couple of teams never did get the pony under control and the pony just drug the kid around the arena holding onto the rope until the kid let go.  Then the next teams - including one of all girls - got smart and two kids got right up around the neck and head of the pony and held onto it and the other kid jumped on and rode it a couple of bucks and then sailed off.  The final one got half way on and got dumped off but the other two kids still had the pony around the neck and the kid got back on and rode it.  VERY FUNNY!

We watched some other events in a different arena - team penning and then the heavy horses competed accompanied by music played by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra all wearing their white cowboy hats!  This is quite an event - everybody in the city seems to get involved.  They call it "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth"  At the heavy horse event we saw the team from Lewisville/Idaho Falls we saw at the Rodeo in Rigby and also a team from Blackfoot.

We asked one of the many very friendly and helpful young people who seemed to be everywhere how to get back to our train stop and made it back to our trailer VERY EXHAUSTED but just when we were in bed about 11 pm we were startled by the loud BOOMS of the fireworks from the Olympic Park just next to our campsite where they were putting on one of four fireworks shows across the city because it is the 100th Aniversary of the Stampede.  We watched out the window of the trailer!  What a party! More on day two of when we returned to the Stampede for the "chucks" as the locals call them.