Rodeo Weekend

 This was Rodeo Weekend in Walden...  thus the Oyster Fry!!! ...which I personally hate.  I think it is a really sick thing to make a big deal of.  After cutting them out of those little newborn calves, (and if you've ever participated in a branding you know that it is a dirty painful violent thing to do) acting like you're so macho by eating them...  well, I think it's pathetic.  Anyway, this is Rodeo Weekend in North Park.  And it was a really busy weekend because it's always the Pioneer Reunion the same weekend as the rodeo, and it happened that this weekend there was a Ride The Rockies bicycle tour that spent the night on it's way through town.  2000 bike riders.  There wasn't enough rooms in town for all the people.

 Here are some pictures of smoke from the wildfires down the Poudre Canyon,  viewed from the fairgrounds.

 This is the smoke over the Rawah mountains to the east which you can barely see for the haze.  I didn't count how many horse trailers there were at the fairgrounds for the rodeo.  Maybe fifty.  A lot.  The first time I had been up there for the rodeo since the kids were little.  I like the pole bending and barrel racing but not so much the bull and bronc riding.

 More of the Rawah Mountains.

  We went down to watch the parade this morning.  There weren't any teams of horses this time, Maybe Roy Golobith doesn't work them any more since he's gone to work for Silver Spur Ranch's Lone Pine Unit and left the State Line Ranch.  They used to have that really cool team of black Percherons that always stood there in that pasture at Three Way.  But there were plenty of people riding horses.  I wanted to mention a float that absolutely amazed us when we watched it go by. It was a semi and flat bed covered with bales of hay and people, (Including Joe's 4th grade teacher, Sarah Carlstrom) and a big sign that said "Cowboys For A Cancer Cure".  I was looking to see if I knew anybody on there when I spotted a woman sitting there on one of the bales of hay smoking a cigarette! It was the most amazing thing!  The float for curing cancer.  (Not to mention sitting on a bale of hay surrounded by bales of hay, surrounded by smoke from raging wild fires!)   And none of the rest of them acted like there was anything wrong with that.  Oh well!  That's North Park!.  Yesterday Jay played with the Front Porch Swingers at the Pioneer Reunion and when he carried his electric piano in it's case into the elementary school gym, a kid came up to him and asked, "Is that a gun in there?"  It is absolutely nuts!  And when that float came back by (Walden's parade is so small, it goes down the street twice!) She was not only still smoking cigarettes but was now carrying a pack of cigarettes and lighter!  I didn't see if any of the hay was smoking.