Back to the Rodeo!

Here are some pictures from yesterday's rodeo madness:

Here are the Dandies performing before the rodeo officially begins. The Dandies are 16 young ladies who serve as goodwill ambassadors for Frontier Days. They travel around to other rodeos in the region representing CFD. They also each carry a flag with a CFD sponsor on it. Here they are doing a move with their horses that looks exactly like "the whip" when you are ice skating...

There are two Pickup Men at the rodeo that I just love. No, these aren't guys at a bar. Rather, the Pickup Men - there are six of them - are the guys that look out for the bull and bronc riders and who get the animals out of the arena after a cowboy flies off. The two guys I am obsessed with just seem so...cool. I love how they sit in their saddles, how they handle their horses, how they just seem to ooze an overall look of...coolness. I get so excited when they come into the arena! And, I like this guy because he looks like a cross between a character in an old Western and a 1970s sitcom cop...

Favorite Pickup Man no. 2. Doesn't he just look...cool??

Here's Cody Sosebee, one of the rodeo clowns. He's getting ready to go back out in the arena. I do not find rodeo clowns one bit creepy. Circus clowns, however, are every bit creepy...

In the barrel...

Inside a rodeo clown's barrel. I've always wondered what it looks like in there. Sosebee stores his barrel by us, so I had my chance to find out...

There are authentic chuckwagon crews set up at the park. They have a big cook-off coming up on Satruday...

This is part of Wild Horse Gulch, which is just a strip of storefronts designed to look like a street in an Old West town. There are lots of Western gifts, food, clothes, etc., sold here.

Here's an example of the Pickup Men leading a bull out of the arena. You can see where they've roped him if you look carefully...

After a hard day of throwing pesky cowboys off their backs bulls deserve a little R&R too...