Day 8 -- Calgary, AB
Google Earth measurements (straight line between locations)
Distance from Vancouver: 673 km
Distance from Kingston: 2887 km
Today we went to the Calgary Stampede! Yay!! Unfortunately, the weather was really bad and it rained a lot. We took the C-Train (Calgary's Light Rail Transit system) to the Stampede area. The C-Train is not automated like the Skytrain and it runs on the street so it obeys traffic lights etc. as well. One cool thing is that the downtown area of the C-Train is free to ride on.
Our rodeo tickets also gave us admission to the rest of the fairgrounds so we walked around first. It was very similar to the PNE except with way more cowboys and cowgirls. Also a lot more animals too! Like the PNE, there was a marketplace area where people tried to sell us magic towels or other junk. There was lots of junk food and raffle draws/lotteries. It rained before the rodeo so everything was wet! We were about 45 minutes early but the rain had stopped so it was not so bad. But once the rodeo actually started, so did the rain! And it only got worse and worse!! After an hour, we were too cold and wet to enjoy watching the show from our seats so we moved inside to dry off, get hot chocolate, and watch it from screens inside the grandstand. Our cowboy hats were advertised to be "water resistant" (they were made of 100% wool) and they did their job well! The rodeo was three hours long in total but we left about an hour early to make sure we could get back to our hotel before the rain storm got any worse.
The rodeo show was pretty fun to watch. We had caught a section of an "Intro to Rodeo" talk that morning which kind of explained the rules but we were not able to appreciate the finer points of each event such as the scoring system. But it was fun to watch cowboys try to stand on unhappy animals or chase calves down and lasso them. The top score that day was something like 4.3 seconds to lasso the calf and tie up its legs! Amazing!
Also, the Stampede seems to really like their fireworks. A whole ton of them went off at appropriate points during the introductions!
Tomorrow will be our last day in Calgary!
Stampede Gates
A really large bull! I think this was the beef cattle show.
This vehicle is pulled by 8 very large horses!
Llamas have funny expressions!
Doesn't sound very good...
They rode around the rodeo arena carrying different flags.
Start of the Rodeo!
Our kitchen-in-a-box. Not shown: wooden spoons, plates, cleaning supplies.
