Youth Rodeo

Today was a really nice day. The sun was out and it was warm, but the humidity was a lot less than the last several days.

The kids and I finished up our school work (hooray, it's Friday!) and Brock had a busy work day.

The highlight of today was that we got to go to a youth rodeo in Seymour, Tennessee. My cousin, Dave, who I haven't seen for many years, lives there. We get to visit his house and share a meal with he and his family tomorrow, but for tonight, he said he was helping out at the event and invited us to watch if we wanted.

We thought the drive would take a little less than an hour based on the gps, but Tom directed us through Pigeon Forge and we drove in a big circle and then through a crazy, curvy, narrow roaded, country neighborhood before we finally arrived at the farm where the rodeo was to be held and we ended up arriving about 20 minutes after the start of the rodeo so there was no way to check in with Dave to say hello before finding a place to watch. I didn't even know how he was "helping" and wasn't completely confident I'd recognize him in the crowd.

The funny thing was that he was the rodeo clown. Brock and I had asked each other if that was him since we were seeing him from across the arena, but before too long he waved at us. :O) Then he kept making all these crazy hand motions and turning around and finally, the young lady that was sitting two rows ahead of us turned around and we understood that she was his girlfriend and her six-year-old daughter was sitting there with her and we had just watched the little girl compete in the lasso competition. By chance, we had ended up sitting right there close to them.

We got to watch the stationary lasso competition in all the different age categories (up to age 19) and then the goat tying. The first group of little cowboys and cowgirls was so cute. They were tiny and the little goat seemed to far outweigh them. The competitor's parent could help them lay the goat down or they could do it themselves and then they had to tie up 3 of the goats legs and they had to stay tied for at least 5 seconds to get a qualifying time.

This was so cute. The girl on the left is competing and the girl
 on the right is comforting the goat with gentle pets.

Our family enjoyed watching the action and felt pretty ignorant about an appealing, but really different lifestyle than we live. These kids have just grown up doing these things and being comfortable with the animals. At first, we felt pretty sad for the goat. It looked scared and tried to run away, but it was staked down and when they had it on the ground to tie it up, it was bleating pitifully the first couple of times. Eventually, the goat seemed to settle down and accept it's job requirements. I decided that if I were to compete in this event, I'd want to go after the first couple of competitors because the goat definitely seemed to "wear out" a bit.

The pole bending competition was exciting to watch. The competitors come into the arena quickly on horseback and manuever their horses, weaving through and around 6 poles and race back out of the arena and the quickest time won. There were some really impressive riders especially in the 11-14 year old categories. One little guy in the 7-10 year old category was thrown from his horse and everyone in the audience gasped, but he hopped back up and seemed ok.

Too soon it was time to go. I was bummed we didn't get to see anything with the calves or the barrel racing which was coming up, but Brock and I had agreed to leave at 9 pm because we had the one hour drive back to the trailer after that. I hadn't had a chance to visit with Dave's girlfriend at all because the surrounding environment was so loud, but I did at least meet her face to face and introduce myself and let her know that we had to get going. It was a beautiful drive back through the countryside, with everything all green and the lightning bugs coming out, but we figured out that Tom had taken us a very strange way in to the ranch and there was a much simpler way out. We chose to take a much less crowded route that avoided Pigeon Forge on the way back to our trailer and it seemed a lot quicker even though it was starting to get dark out and the road was really curvy.

Tomorrow, we're looking forward to getting to see a little more of Smoky Mountain National Park, but we also have to take the Yukon back in to have them look at those wobbly tires. They just still don't seem right and even though the nearest Discount Tire is backtracking about 30 minutes, we have to do it because there are no store locations in Virginia, where we'll be headed next. In the late afternoon and evening tomorrow, we are all looking forward to getting to spend time with Dave and his family at his house. They have graciously offered to make us a home-cooked dinner from things grown on their farm. Yum.