I had never been to this little county fair before but earlier a number of people praised its small town feel, organization, and cleanliness. They were right. The fair is small but charming in a low key way. And it is free.
The buildings seemed to be kept up nicely and the grounds were mainly green grass and not asphalt or dirt.
Since Tammy has her Homemade Gourmet home based business we visited the vendor area to check out which other home based businesses were there. Not many were, even taking in account the relatively small number of overall vendors. (Note the map in the link shows the location of only the non-food based vendors.) I think there were only three home based vendors and two of them were from Oregon. The Scentsy vendor actually seemed more excited about the potential for a new home based business from Canada that will sell hemp products.
Tammy and I also saw Teri and her boyfriend with their Hawaiian Ice stand. Teri was one of my census workers in the VDC census operation.
After getting a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and a freshly squeezed lemonade drink Tammy and I attended the rodeo. We got general seating tickets in the non-drinking section. This was sections 8 through 10 in the grandstand, at the northern end. Not bad seats but as some of the action started at the southern end (where the drinking sections and beer garden was located) we viewed some of the events at a longer distance.
The rodeo started with a parading of the American flag and talk about patriotism. The rodeo announcer was confused at where our soldiers were fighting wars as he thought they were in Iraq and Iran.
Then a buckboard drove around the grounds driven by women in pink as this night's rodeo was dedicated to the "Tough Enough to Wear Pink" breast cancer research. If the winners of the various events wore something pink they got an additional $100 in prize money. The majority of participants and winners weren't wearing pink even though many cowboys - and cowgirls - supporting the rodeo wore pink shirts.
First up were two bucking bronco riders. They came from gates across the grandstand track.
Then the team ropers started from the south end. The tough job in that event was by the guys who roped the calf's legs.
Another event later was calf roping by a single rider who roped a speeding calf by the head then lept from his horse and tied the calf's legs as quick as possible. The horse needed to keep the rope attached to the calf's head taught to prevent the calf from wiggling too much or get free. One unfortunate rider had his calf get loose within the 6 second period after it was tied. And several of the top rated calf ropers in Montana failed to even lasso their calf. What was up with that? (I didn't get any good photos of this event).
Then we had steer wrestling where the cowboy lept from a speeding horse onto a steer and had to wrestle it over onto its side. Another rider rides on the other side of the steer to keep it running in a straight line. In the photo below the steer wrestler is in the cloud of dust behind the horse rider.
Here is a video of the steer wrestling.
Then we had more bucking bronco riders.
Three horses stood motionless when the gate opened. The rider had three chances and after two chances got to decide if they wanted to switch horses. Only one rider switched. And this horse that refused to buck was supposedly rated a tougher more dangerous horse to ride. As the announcer said after the first horse - a mare - refused to buck, "She's having a moment."
Another horse changed its mind as the corral gate was being closed, This surprised the rider who didn't last long once the horse cleared the gate.
Then a half dozen or so cowgirls got into the act with barrel racing.
Finally around ten bull riders did their thing. These bulls all went wild. And a number of them were plenty mad even after they bucked the rider off. One guy behind a closing gate should be sore after a bull slammed into the gate mashing him between the gate and the wall. A few of the bucking bronco and bull riders walked gingerly after they got off their animals.
(My camera's battery quit by the time the bull riders did their thing so I have no photos of it).
The rodeo announcer (Apparently some guy from Texas) and the clown - Crash Cooper from Canada - kept up a conversation to fill the gaps between the events and riders. The clown was ok but the announcer would often say stupid things. I'm sure he didn't endear himself to the residents of Columbia Falls, MT when he called that town a suburb of Kalispell. Other times the clown would change the conversation after something dumb the announcer had said.I know I am a rookie when it comes to knowledge about rodeos, but a little more conversation about the events and results would have been nice.
Here Crash is showing how wears pink in support of breast cancer research.
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