[trip style = urban + weekend getaway]
Fourteen days before the start of "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth," Alberta flooded. Yet a tidal wave of water wasn't going to rock landlocked Calgary's virtual boat. Within a few days of the flood, the Calgary Stampede's Chairman proclaimed "come hell or high water, the show will go on." And it is, right now {July 5 - 14, 2013}.
I just spent last weekend at the 10-day show's get-go. To a non-local, you'd never know rain had ravaged the city only two weeks prior. Aside from the planned Saddledome concerts---Dixie Chicks, Kiss, Tim McGraw, Carly Rae Jepsen---which could not go on due to flooding cresting the 8th row, and the still-wet food court area in the basement of the Big Four venue, the grounds don't even look damp.
This is due to 24-hour crews of workers called upon from all over North America to repair and rebuild the rodeo without taking resources away from Calgary's clean-up effort. Over 220 dump trucks hauled away 88 million pounds of spoiled soil on the Stampede's just-finished infield and repaired it in a week---a job that took three weeks to complete in the Spring. A sea of water was sucked out of every space, and flash-dried with the gale force of a 1000+ industrial dryers.
2013 marked my first Stampede {as did a shooter of pickle juice, one of this year's fair foods!}. It will not be my last. Just call me a converted cowgirl. To put it lightly, I had a buckin' blast.
Photos To start off, here's a two-minute video the Stampede put together showing the park's near-miracle transformation over 14 days.
Bare bronc. (I was happy to learn both the athletes and the animals have free access to a full range of medical practitioners at this invite-only competition.)
In Canada we say yahoo, not yeehaw, apparently.
Start of the chuckwagon races.
Chuckwagon race to the finish.
Fair food, 101. line one: free roadside flapjack*, deep-fried bubble gum, deep-fried Pop-Tart line two: deep-fried Oreos, the center of deep-fried Oreos, pickle juice shooter line three: deep-fried butter, choco-dipped bacon-on-a-stick, deep-fried Doritos *over one million free pancakes are handed out all over the city during Stampede
[photos by @tripstyler, snapped while a guest of stampede]