Thursday, March 13, 2014

IT'S RODEO TIME IN HOUSTON

Wednesday, March 12 – We attended the self-proclaimed largest rodeo in the world today – The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It is held at the Reliant Center which is the indoor stadium of the Houston Texans NFL team, the Reliant Arena, and the Houston Astrodome,which will be demolished in the future. This is a huge facility located just east of the downtown area.

Houston Rodeo sign

Parking at our daughter's apartment in Mid-town, we rode the mass transit train to the Reliant Center. This is a nice way to travel, missing all the traffic from the thousands of people driving to the Rodeo and the $20 parking fee. The train dropped us off just a few hundred feet from the Reliant Center Exhibition Hall.

Our first stop was checking out the vendors. We enjoy this part of the festivities. We even bought a couple items, a Houston Rodeo T-shirt for Paul and a pair of high tech gardening shears for Marsha. We walked through the 100's of vendors, which are mostly cowboy/cowgirl related. You could sure spend a few bucks on some nice cowboy boots!

boot stand

Plenty of bling for the gals.
bling

For some reason, Paul thought he might be able to put a pair of stirrups to good use…oh dear.
stirupps

Two very interesting fountains.fountains

Every Texan knows what part of the cow the brisket comes from. Do you?
 cow

Marsha bought a chain from one of the vendors several years ago. The gal then told her the chain is guaranteed for life. Well, we all know how that goes. So, Marsha decided to see if this was true. Her chain had tarnished and asked the gal how she could get another. The gal looked at the chain, recognized it immediately and gave her  new sparkling chain for her cross – FREE! No questions asked. Now that is a vendor we will deal with any day!

We then walked over to see the livestock and were a little disappointed that only the goats were in attendance today. Not sure why, but the cattle, hogs, llamas, and other animals weren't here yet. Maybe it has to do with the rodeo lasting nearly a month. The animals must come in different waves.

This little boy asked Marsha if she wanted to pet his goat. “Of course,” she said. He then began to explain why they have that thing over their mouth and why they were all wearing coats. The goats were being judged on Thursday and Friday, and their coats needed to stay pretty. Also, he explained in great detail how goats like to eat everything. He said the thing over their mouth is only taken off when they give them their “good” food. They didn’t want them eating anything bad and throwing it up when they were getting judged. He was such a cutie. (Marsha’s words, not Paul’s.)

boy and goat

The kids area was very crowded. Remember, it's Spring Break for the schools in Texas, so many families take advantage of the time to attend the Rodeo. Also, Wednesday is $10 Day. A bargain that includes everything at the Rodeo including the nightly concert.

The kids area is like a petting zoo full of farm animals. The really neat aspect is there are several displays of baby animals being born. If you can't get close enough to the pen to see the action, don't worry because everything is displayed on large screen TV's. Amazing!

pigs

Yes, Marsha got her fix with the little chicks. Each time we come she needs to watch them being born.

Wow, look at the size of those feet.
little chick

We then rode the tram over to the horse arena to attend the Junior Horse Agility Competition. Some of these girls can really ride. A little scary for the parents, one would think. This was a very enjoyable competition.

horse riding

We even found something for Kelly. Her colors for the wedding are purple and silver. If she decides to ride a horse to the reception, this would fit right in with her color scheme.

DSC09640

We stopped at one of the hundreds of food tents for a quick lunch on the way to the stadium for the Championship Rodeo. This was Round 3 with an eventual purse of $50,000 going to the winner. There was bucking bronco riding, bull back riding, calf roping, chuck wagon races, a horse agility competition, and a calf scramble. Tell you all about that in the next post.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!