Sonya's Blog - Day 241 - San Antonio Rodeo and Stock Show

Sonya’s Blog - Day 241 - February 18th - San Antonio Rodeo and Stock Show

We are going to the rodeo and stock show today. It is just down the bike path from our campground, so we are going to bike over and save the $15 parking fee. It will only take 5 or 10 minutes to bike there. We are going to walk around the grounds this morning and then go back to the RV for lunch and to relax for the afternoon. The rodeo starts at 7 PM and is followed by a concert. The concert features Randy Houser tonight, who is a country singer. We don’t know any of his songs, but we only had certain nights that we could go. Mostly we want to check out the rodeo.

The grounds opened at 9, but we didn’t show up until 10. The pig races were just about to start, which is where we entered, so we went to watch. Pig races are always funny. The pigs put on a good race. There are tons of small kids here at the fairgrounds today with their schools. We were surrounded by small fries, they were pretty excited to be at the pig races. The pigs are racing for oreo cookies, but it looked like they were racing to get back to their pens. They were not so excited to come out, but super excited to go back in.

Run little piggies, run!

We looked at the midway to see what time it opened at, but it doesn’t open until 4 PM. The kids were a little disappointed, but not so much. There wasn’t too many rides. I guess it makes sense that it doesn’t open until 4 PM, have to wait until the kids get off school.

We headed over to the stock show and checked out the sheep and goats. There are a lot of 4H clubs here and some of them were showing their animals. We went to the dairy barn and they were showing some school children how they milk a cow. They had a jersey cow for the demo. Jersey’s don’t give as much milk as the Holstein. Their milk is much richer though. It was a good demonstration.

We then went into the area that has all the shops and such to have a look around. There was lots of neat stuff to see, wow they must love tassels and bedazzled clothes down here, there was a lot of that.

It was time for lunch, so we headed back to the RV. We just hung out at the RV for the afternoon and took Kizmet on lots of walks. Blake and Isaac headed to the pool when the temperature hit 29 to cool off.

After supper we got back on our bikes and headed back to the grounds. They have a massive At&T Stadium and it is an indoor rodeo. We were pretty high up, but we had a good view of the arena. The rodeo opened with a good show, lots of lights and a nice little parade of horses. I cannot remember if the National Anthem was sung first or if we were lead in prayer, but both of these things happened. I have never seen a group prayer at a rodeo before, that was a first. We all know the Star Spangled Banner really well now.

Our flag, right in the centre!

Starting show for rodeo:

Then the rodeo started. They had two cowboys from the Calgary Stampede that were helping out. I am not sure what their positions are called, but they are the guys on the horses that ride along side the bucking broncs and haul the cowboy off and then herd the horse back to the stables. We gave them a big cheer.

Calgary Stampede Cowboys in the red shirts, doing their job:

The rodeo was good, probably 10 to 12 competitors in each event. There was only one Canadian, a cowboy from Magrath, Alberta. He was in the calf roping competition, but failed to rope his calf. We cheered for him anyhow. They did have quite a few broncs from the Calgary Stampede as well.

They let all the horses into the arena, once all the horse events were done:

The funniest part was they brought out some Mutton Busting competitors. They were aged between 4 and 7 and it was pretty funny to watch. The one kid, who ended up winning, did a fancy dance. He was so proud of himself for staying on so long. They also had a Calf Scramble competition. This was for the 4H kids. They just let the calfs loose in the arena and let the kids chase them around. They have to pin them down and put a rope around their neck and then get them to the middle of the arena first. It was pretty funny to watch. The calfs didn’t think much about it.

They also had some bull riders, those guys are crazy. It is exciting to watch, but scary. One guy got all got up in the ropes or something, when he fell off and he was all tangled up under the bucking bull. It was pretty scary, but they managed to get him untangled and he walked away. That was the scariest moment.

It was a good rodeo, it went on for about 2 hours. They then set up for the concert. We stayed for about 5 or so songs, but then Isaac was so tired and we were a little bored. He had a good voice and everything, but the songs were all similar. We headed back to our bikes and proceeded to bike home. Blake had bought lights for the kids bikes, so we stayed together and went a bit slower on the way back. Luckily, the moon is almost full and it was not as dark on the path as I thought it would be.

Sonya