Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th July 2015

So we went to Calgary for the stampede, 13 of us plus a few more! We had a blast! We went to the rodeo on the Friday which was awesome. We had bull riding, bronco riding, steed wrestling, pony riding and so much more!

The event's roots are traced to 1886 when the Calgary and District Agricultural Society held its first fair. In 1912, American promoter Guy Wead*** organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede. He returned to Calgary in 1919 to organize the Victory Stampede in honour of soldiers returning from World War I. Weadick's festival became an annual event in 1923 when it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to create the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.

The bull riding was pretty awesome, there was a few bulls who point blank refused to move and was just hilarious to watch! The guys who rounded them up had a fair trouble getting them back into their pens! We watched the guys who risk their lives getting the bulls attention away from the cowboys who have just been flown off the bulls. It was amusing watching the bulls chasing the guys and everyone jumping over the fence!

The pony riding though...that was on a whole new level of hilarious! So these girls need to mount this wild pony to win. Basically the girls got dragged around the arena for our entertainment! I could watch this all day! It was quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever watched!

The bronco riding was pretty awesome, the riders are very talented to stay on these animals while they are going crazy below them trying to buck them off! Very dangerous too!

It was a very exciting day watching all of these events happen!

We walked around the event grounds where they had a giant fairground, a dog show which was cute! I found my Calgary stampede poster for the year, I need to build a house with many walls at this rate!

We had a little lie on on the Saturday, Andrew and I headed down early to check out the working horses and other shows going on. We had a good wander around the stampede grounds. We got attacked by giant hailstones and got completely soaked within five minutes! Andrew, Kate, Andy and I decided to go back to the hotel to get changed before coming back to the stampede for the evening show. It was a good job we did as it got a little chilly.

We had wagon racing, which was so exciting!!!! They raced around the race track, there was a few incidents. One horse must have broken its leg as there was a swarm of people running off. Black tarp was put up and then POOF! The horse was gone....! Poor thing.

The evening show was a 'celebration' of everything Canadian. It was an enjoyable show, it did go on a little bit long. Plenty of singing and dancing, a family taking took their citizenship test and become 'official' Canadians. The fireworks was awesome though!!

Everyone went out to a cowboy bar, but I was way too tired to go out so a few of us went to the Irish bar down the road for food and some drinks!

Everyone went back home early and Andrew and I went to the zoo! It was a pretty good zoo, there wasn't a lot of animals but they had plenty of space which is good!

It was a pretty awesome weekend we a good group of peeps!