Alberta road trip, Post 2: Calgary Stampede and High River

**Please read the important note at the end of Alberta road trip, Post 1 about our new way of sharing our travel photos.**

On Saturday morning, after quite a sleep-in, the four of us eventually emerged and set off around lunchtime on the 3-hour drive to the Calgary Stampede. We didn't have directions to the actual location, which turned out to be a bit of an oversight. You'd think they'd have lots of signs to it...

Anyway, we eventually found the Stampede grounds, which are actually right in the city centre of Calgary! By this time it was around 4pm. For those of you not exactly sure what the Calgary Stampede is, here is Wikipedia's definition: The Calgary Stampede, which bills itself as The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, is a large festival, exhibition, and rodeo held in Calgary, Alberta for 10 days every summer from early to mid-July, attracting more than 1.2 million visitors. It is one of Canada's largest annual events, and the world's largest outdoor rodeo.

The rodeo is held daily at 1:30pm, and each evening there are chuckwagon races and the Grandstand Show. It was the latter two we had purchased tickets for online, so more about that in a minute. As soon as we'd entered the grounds, one of the first things we stumbled across was the last two songs of a performance by The Lost Fingers, a band Ben had coincidentally heard of earlier that week and really liked, without knowing they would be at the Stampede!



After this, we spent a while wandering around the Stampede Park - the midway with food stands, rides, etc, and a large pavilion full of vendor stalls. Ben and I each got a new hat of the variety that meant we fit right in with the rest of the Stampede-goers! We ate some Stampede food and watched a very amusing hypnotist show.





By 7:45pm, we were in our seats high up in the huge Grandstand, looking down over the racetrack and the much smaller grandstand on the other side. The event began with the playing of the national anthem, "O Canada", by a smart red-and-white marching band, while a helicopter circled overhead with a very large Canadian flag. I took a video of the second half of this that gives me goosebumps - click here to view it in YouTube. You can see the line of distinguished guests standing in front of the band, including four First Nations elders (Canada's native people - wearing the Indian headdresses) and an Indian princess (in blue).



Then, it was time for the chuckwagon race heats to begin. From Wikipedia: "a chuckwagon was originally a wagon that carried food and cooking equipment on the prairies of the US and Canada". Since it took me a few race heats to figure out what was actually going on, here's a description from Wikipedia as to what happens during a chuckwagon race:

Chuckwagon racing is a team event, led by a driver who commands a team of horses pulling the chuckwagon, and is supported by four outriders—each racing individual thoroughbred horses that follow the chuckwagon. Each race typically involves four teams, and begins with the outriders "breaking camp", by tossing two tent poles and a barrel representing a camp stove into the back of their wagon before mounting their horses and following the wagons as they complete a figure eight around two barrels before circling a race track. The first wagon to cross the finish line typically wins, although various time penalties are handed out if a barrel is knocked over, a tent pole or stove is not loaded, or an outrider crosses the finish line too far behind his wagon driver.







It's actually quite a fun and fast-paced sport to watch! Click here to see a video of the start of heat 6 - look out for team 2 knocking over a barrel, and one of team 4's outriders getting left behind!

After the chuckwagon races were over, it was time for the Grandstand Show (after waiting 40 minutes or so for the massive stage to be set up right on the above track!). Well... the Grandstand Show was something very hard to describe to you in words. It was an incredible spectacle featuring, at various times during the show, hundreds of children/ teenagers singing and dancing, a couple of famous Canadian singers, a Montreal comedian called Sugar Sammy, four motorbikes jumping over the stage and turning somersaults in mid-air, dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, aerial stunts above the stage/ audience, fireworks, and much more. It was AWESOME!!



Click here for a video of the motorbikes (unfortunately I didn't capture their finale, where all four of them went in quick succession and were all in mid-air at the same time!).
Click here for a video of fireworks during the song "This Is The Big Show".
Click here for a video of the aerial stunts near the end of the show.

It was after midnight by the time the show finished and we left the Stampede. Megan and Justin had previously arranged for us to stay with a Canadian friend, Karla, who had once stayed with them in NZ. However, her plans had changed, so she had given them the phone number of another couple whom none of us had met (or so we thought...). They had told Justin to call them when we left the Stampede, and they would tell us how to get to their place.

Well, it turned out that they lived almost an hour south, in the town of High River. And so they wouldn't have to get up when we arrived at 1am, they left the front door unlocked and told us to go downstairs and make ourselves at home. So there we were, sneaking into a house in the middle of the night, hoping it was the right place, and curling up in the beds we found!!!

In the morning, we woke up and met our hosts, Roscoe and Janessa and their baby girl, Brianne. We then realised that (a) Megan and Janessa had met in Wollongoong 5 years ago when Janessa was travelling in Australia, and (b) Roscoe's aunt Kathy was one of the two workers who took Ben and I around Barcelona before we left on our cruise in November!!!

So, we went to their meeting with them (conversations afterwards included: "so you know Roscoe and Janessa then?", "well, we just met them this morning", "oh, I thought you stayed with them", "yes, we did"...!), and then had lunch back at their place with another of their friends, Curtis.





We were having so much fun that we also decided to stay for dinner, and they kindly cooked us real Aussie-style burgers (beetroot, pineapple and egg on burgers is unheard of over here). Then we went around to Karla's house for dessert, and met a whole contingent of local young people... and some from closer to home: Tyler M and his bro (have forgotten his name) from Brisbane!!

Then, we drove the 3 hours back to Edmonton, so it was our third consecutive post-2am night. What a fantastic weekend!!!

*Credit goes to Megan for the photos of the Stampede track and stage used in this blog entry - her zoom's way better than mine!

CLICK HERE to view our Alberta road trip photos.