Calgary

The Biggest Out Door Show on Earth: The Calgary Stampede

July 3-10, 2013 – Yahoo!!! NOT Yehaa! We are in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the Stampede! We are finding ourselves in the middle of a real Cowboy Experience.  Despite Calgary and surrounding communities suffering from the worst floods ever in the middle of June, “THE SHOW MUST GO ON”.  We were ushered into our parking space for the week at the McMahon Stadium, home of the CFL Stampeders.  The Fantasy Tour Company was well organized and helped everyone get settled in, hooked up and ready to enjoy the Calgary Experience.  There were approximately 80 other rigs with us, everything thing from small travel trailers, 5^th wheels to some very up-scale motorhomes. The other “campers” came from all over the states and a few from Canada, there was even one guy from London, he was not in a MoHo, but stayed in a local hotel and joined us for our activities.  We have enjoyed the company of some very friendly campers.  Through- out the stay we had school busses take us to some of the venues.  We also became pretty proffiencent at using the “C” Train that is just a block away from the stadium and takes you right to the Stampede Grounds in less than 20 minutes. We were given train tickets as part of the package deal, but had to fight the crowds – many “sardine experiences”.

At the Calgary Stampede Parade

Yell it loud and often!

4^th of July we made our way downtown to the Calgary Tower for a nice breakfast in the rotating restaurant; a great view of the city.  We went up to the observation tower where we were able to walk around and get a better perspective and lay out of the land.  We could clearly see the rivers that had caused the flood problems less than 2 weeks earlier.  The city had their hospitality mats out, welcoming everyone to “party”.  We enjoyed a couple of stops at different sidewalk pubs – fun to watch people at the street vendor stalls trying on their cowboy hats and duds.  That evening we joined the tour group for an American hotdog dinner complete with root beer floats.  Our 4^th of July celebration was a bit abbreviated as we were surprised by a quickly developing thunderstorm that dumped quite a bit of rain on us as we all ran back to our “homes” carrying our lawn chairs, hotdogs and floats.

Calgary good food and a good view

R.C.M.P

The first real Stampede Experience was the parade.  We were bussed into the heart of the very busy city and walked a few blocks to our bleacher seats.  This was definitely the way to see this parade – doing this on our own could be daunting.  The weather was cool but sunny, a very pleasant change after the heat we had been in a few days earlier. There were several bands, many floats, and yes LOTS of horses and cowboys/girls.  I really enjoyed the many draft horses that were throughout the parade;  Mike’s favorite was the HUGE bull that a cowboy rode (how did he do that?). The parade had fleets of street sweepers that were interspersed through out the route to keep the pavement clean. (Yep there was quite a lot of poop). After the parade we found our way back to Stephen’s Street to enjoy lunch and do a bit of window-shopping.  We made our way to the Stampede Grounds in the early evening.  WOW what a crowd – we walked through the exhibition hall watching the vendors demonstrate their wares (dice’em slice’em…). Found a hall that had some very nice western art on display: paintings and pictures that caught our interest.  Since we really don’t have much empty wall space or a western theme we were able to resist any temptation to buy, but fun to look.  Enjoyed a glass of wine and a nibble – visited with some very friendly locals.  The rain had started up again and we got pretty WET coming back to camp, that didn’t deter us from stopping by the food vendors for a “deep fried Oreo cookie” for dessert – yummm! With all the rain that this area has been receiving one understands the 2013 slogan of “COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!”

ONE BIG BULL!

Hang ON!

We had two afternoons at the Stampede Grounds where we watched the cowboy/girl action. We had good seats near the middle of the arena. It was exciting and the crowd was very spirited as we watched bronco riding, calf roping, bull riding, steer wrestling, bareback riding, and barrel racing – what athletes these young men and women are. Made my neck and back hurt just watching them.  The arena was also the show location for the evenings’ entertainment extravaganza. The night show started off with 36 chuck wagons that raced. Each was pulled by 4 retired racehorses. Quite an interesting race to watch: 4 wagons race against each other – around barrels in a figure 8 course then once around the track.  Following these races was the Grandstand Show.  Featured were the Young Canadians of Calgary (great dancers, singers) alongside acrobats, aerialists, dancers, singers, orchestra, extreme sports and musical headliners.  We saw KISS, (who were scheduled to perform at the Saddle Dome but had to cancel due to the flood damage).  The show made good use of trapezes – a floating piano, opera singer, and dancers… We both enjoyed this show – spectacular fireworks completed the evening. 

Chuck Wagon Races, YAHOO!

Monday morning we visited Heritage Park – a living history center with exhibits from 1860 – 1950. We had a nice breakfast then toured the park on foot with a guide, then rode the steam train around the park and took in more of the attractions.  We dodged the rain and hurried back to the bus and back to camp.  The last evening was another good buffet dinner, we enjoyed a bit of western entertainment by the Rodeo Riders, a comedic cowboy duo.

Heritage Park, Gasoline Alley

The Fantasy RV Tour of the Calgary Stampede Rally has been a fun experience – think it was pretty good value for the dollar. We are looking forward to our Alaska adventure in the next few days.

our stadium campground, us next to the pole