La Fiesta de los Vaqueros

 Tucson has been celebrating their cowboys for 98 years.  It's one of the most popular winter rodeos for obvious reasons ... sunshine!!  Although we have been rained out in the past, this year the weather (at least on this day) could not have been better.  70 degrees of gorgeous sunshine with barely a breath of wind.

Here's Mr. Chance and his granddaughter ... all grown up.  Every year we take this picture of the two of them.

Just before we went in, we were greeted by these guys ... three of them screaming overhead.  It's the sound of freedom, and we LOVE it!

Once inside, we make the rounds of stuff for sale.  Most of this is touristy stuff, but it's still fun to look at

Round back of the chutes they have the bucking horses snoozing and soaking up all the warm they can.

Someone asked why they are all lined up like that.  Just like people, horses have buddies they group up with, other horses they like to hang out with, so they stand together.  There is also a definite pecking order among horses.  If the top dog (or horse in this case) is facing one way, there must be a good reason ... so they will ALL face that way.  

You've heard turn tail to the wind?  If it's windy or raining, they will all turn their tails to the wind.  They don't like it any better than WE do.

Looky here ... freeze dried candy!!  We didn't try any, but every time we went by, they had people in the booth.

Here you can buy a hat in any color you like.  It's for the kids of course, or as Patty mentioned ... the rodeo Queen from 1959 (we think we saw her here).  There were no pink hats on the ranch growing up ... we wouldn't be caught dead with anything other than a regular tan straw hat.  No felts hats were seen either ... they were too expensive.

After a quick lunch (we'll talk about that later), we went up into the stands to watch the Junior Rodeo.  Sadly, granddaughter Laila's horse has a swollen leg problem and she had to leave to take him to the vet.  As with puppies, horses come first.

There was no grand entry for this rodeo, just get on with the mutton busting!  The two kids in the black hats are the sons of the rodeo barrel man, J J Harrison.  He's one of the few "clowns" I love to watch at the rodeo.  Even with two hip replacement surgeries (he's not that old either), he's still working the rodeos and lets his kids be the pickup men for the mutton busting.  They love it!!

These are all four and five year old kids.  Most got back up waving and happy.  Some, not so much.

Do you see a pattern here??  The scores were great ... 80 and 11/14ths,  91 and 32/8ths ... the announcer was having just as much fun as the kids were.

That's JJ on the left and his two kids running to the rescue.  Of course JJ helps the kids get back up, usually telling them what a great job they did.  He's wearing a microphone, so you can laugh at his comments.  The crowd went wild for every ride.  

There's way too much to put it all in one blog, so I'll continue over the next couple of days.  If you haven't been to a rodeo in Tucson, it's in February every year.  You'll have a blast stomping your feet and screaming while us girls watch the tall good looking cowboys in their Wrangler jeans!!

See you tomorrow!!