Calgary Stampede Rodeo

Thursday morning June 11 found us riding our school bus once again to the downtown Calgary Tower, 623 feet high.  We had a nice breakfast with our group and then went up on the observation deck to view 360 degrees the surrounding Calgary geography.  Here are a few pics from up there.

Way off in the distance about center of the pic, you can see McMahon Stadium, our RV park.

Above, one of the C-Trains passing by and below the top of the Glenbow Museum, where we visited after breakfast.

Above, another CTrain and the Glenbow River that three weeks ago put 15 feet of water in downtown.  Below, another pic of the river.

The little parade that takes place every morning during the Stamped two-week festivities, making their way through the downtown.  Our group will participate in this on Friday and will be treated to a pancake & bacon breakfast right after the trek.

Below the Tower, a poster made up signifying will of the people of Alberta & surrounding Provincial & US volunteers that pushed hard to get the city cleaned up and ready for the annual Stampede.  This is obviously THE BIG EVENT for Calgary each year.

Check out some of the motocross ramp jumpers.  This was the warm-up prior to the rodeo events of the day.

Above, the guy does a back flip.  Wow!

And now the main event:  The Rodeo, which is in it's eighth day of completion of the cowboys from all over the world.  The events lasted about three hours and it took place in a large stadium.

The Fantasy RVers' seats were up in section 510, (high, which were good seats) and I was fortunate that I had brought my 80-300mm zoom lens with me to get close to the action.

Bronco riding...

cow roping...

steer riding..

calf roping & calf tossing, or whatever it's called...felt sorry for the little critters...

These are some tough hombres...

I am uploading a total of 408 photos from yesterday's events at the rodeo.  Obviously I cannot put them all in this blog.  So, I will save some of them perhaps for the next blog as this one is already long enough.  Till then, RVing Beach Bums from Calgary, Alberta.