Road-ee-oo. Yee-haw!

On July 4th, America's Independence Day, we were leaving Yellowstone and on the road for Cody, Wyoming. That's Cowboy Country, dontcha know. If you don't wear a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and drive a pick-em-up truck, you ain't nobody--except these people are for real, not wannabes (although they certainly cater to the tourist crowd). We arrived at our motel and even had time for the children to have a swim in the pool before we headed for the Cody Stampede (rodeo), which Megan had booked ahead of time.

The rodeo began at 5:00 and was to last three hours. I errantly thought there were going to be fireworks on the Stampede grounds, so I carried my purse and three sweatshirts. (We didn't need them...so I sat holding them throughout the entire rodeo. Big mistake.) Robin had brought her stuffed bear from Yellowstone and a couple of other trinkets...one of which fell through the bleacher seats to the top of a roof on a building below. (That required a trip under the bleachers and some begging to see if anyone was willing to help an 8-year-old greenhorn get her $2 toy.) Another thing: we were in the 23rd row up on bleachers. It wasn't in the nosebleed section, but pert neart. (That's cowboy talk for "pretty near it" for you dandy dudes.) I HATE walking up those when you can see the ground underneath...

We were packed in like sardines, but the show was good. Without much fanfare between events, there was bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, calf roping, barrel racing, and a couple of rounds of bull riding. (What's a "bronc" anyway? I mean, I know it's short for "bronco" and means a bucking horse...but why don't they just say that??) Many stayed on for the full eight seconds, but many didn't. Not sure how the scores were tallied. (I'll have to Google that.)

The true heroes of the rodeo were not the contestants, in my opinion, but the two "pick-up" guys and their horses. They were amazing! They stayed in the ring with the competitors. At the 8-second buzzer, they rode next to the bucking animal close enough for the contestant to grab on and dismount. They delivered the contestant safely to the ground, then went after the bucking animal and, still racing around, reached over and unhooked the bucking strap, grabbed the reins, and slowed the animal down enough to get it back in the pen. I was fascinated watching the teamwork between man and horse. There was some pretty skillful riding going on--some of it hands-free and at gallop! I wonder how they train those horses to be so fearless next to racing/bucking animals??! It was pretty obvious to me that these guys had been riding and working the rodeo for a long time. And, by the way, they changed horses twice during the show, so there were many more than just two horses that were so well trained! (How does one get a horse to gallop? The best I was ever able to do on a very reluctant steed was a jarring canter that rattled my teeth.)

There were also rodeo clowns, of course. They provide some comic relief, but are actually there to distract bucking bulls after the contestant is on the ground (to hope to prevent injury while he makes his escape). There was one injury--a cowboy whose head made contact with a bull's horn on a buck (Denis has it on camera). They took him off on a backboard, but I guess he did wake up before they had him off the field. Whew! Thankfully, the clowns weren't needed too much...

Then, the show was over. Huh? No fireworks?? Guess the fireworks would be somewhere in town, so we went off in search. Got a good spot to see them--on a mountain side behind a church, overlooking a valley where they were to be shot off. We got there in plenty of time so the kids could play, etc. As it neared dark, we watched a storm approach over the far mountains. The wind picked up. It became a race to see which would happen first--the storm or the fireworks. The fireworks won...but the wind got bad enough that I sat in the car while my family watched outside...until the rain came just before the finale of rockets "bursting in air". It was different!

And...by the way....the movies always talk about storms coming up quickly over the mountains. While that may be true in some places, we had occasion to watch two approaching storms over our trip. One took hours and never did materialize where we were, although we could SEE it seemingly move straight for us. The other was this Fourth of July one. It took hours to arrive from when we first saw it over the far mountains. Distance is relative!

We yelled "Happy Birthday, America!" from the safety of the minivan....then drove back to our motel for the night. We had a truly unique Fourth of July experience. Yee-haw!