Thursday - We are certainly enjoying the nice weather in Reno, especially when we see Phoenix's weather. Although it's warmed up a little every day since we got here, we are still just getting to around 90 degrees. Today we decided to keep the morning free, our first activity was to locate the arrival of the cattle drive over by the rodeo grounds, which was scheduled for noon. So I took advantage of the free time and did our laundry, which took a little longer than it should have because I had a "blonde moment." They have those stacked dryers, and I put my money in the bottom one but put my load of laundry in the top one. The first stack I used both, so that worked ok, but when I went to check on progress, I found that my one load wasn't spinning, but I only had 23 minutes left to run. I went over to the office and told her my dryer had stopped. She said if there was an empty one, just switch my load and she would reimburse me. So when I went back to do that, I realized the bottom dryer was spinning empty. I figured out my mistake, switched the load and added more money, and went back to the office and told her it was "operator error." So I finally got that chore done. I warned David so he wouldn't make the same mistake because they did laundry in the afternoon. (I have a feeling he would have figured it out to start with, but I guess I didn't pay attention to the arrows by the change box.)
Anyhow, we got that taken care and set off to find the cattle drive. Joe is an excellent chauffeur, he is getting more familiar with the GPS in the car, and he makes his own route sometimes, especially here where they have a lot of streets closed for the rodeo event. We ended up with a great parking spot, and a place to set our lawn chairs in the shade, right next to the sidewalk. We had about an hour's wait (those silly cattle were LATE!!), but it was fun to watch. There were lots of people lining the streets. One woman rolled down her car window and asked us what everyone was waiting for.
Finally, after the cops and sheriffs got the traffic off this street, here they came.
I was juggling my cell phone and my camera, and I dropped the phone and it almost went down the storm drain. The cowboy riding by told me I was lucky, and I totally agreed!
Fortunately, the street sweepers followed the cattle and took care of that business.
From there, we made the short drive to the Fleischmann Planetarium on the University of Nevada-Reno campus. Here we watched a couple of films and then checked out the exhibits. I thought there would be an observatory but there wasn't.
Their exhibits were a lot about the planets and about pieces of meteors that had been found around the country, especially around Odessa, Texas and in Nevada.
They had an exhibit of the space station too.
We left there and headed back to the campground, which was a surprisingly short distance. Joe and I located a nearby post office so I could mail a package to Florida, then we kicked back for a while, until it was time for the Main Event, the Extreme Bull competition. We arrived about an hour early, which allowed us time to walk through some of the merchandise barns. Lots of neat cowboy stuff, but pretty steep price tags on most of it.
Mazie surprised us by being a real fan of bull riding, and this was a great competition. Our seats were right above the cattle corrals (not the bulls), but we assume these were the cattle we saw brought into town at noon.
They did the full official opening ceremony, and the drill team came through with their flags.
We saw a lot of full 8-second rides, but we also saw a lot of very short ones. It was fun.
And one of the most exciting things, one of my very favorite things -- the Clydesdales arrived!!!!!
The clown's barrel in the center of the grounds had Coors Light on it, and those Budweiser horses ran right over it, which Joe said he knew they would do. Had I expected that, I would have tried to get a picture of them taking it out!
Back to the bull riding, the competition continued. We couldn't understand the announcer very well and couldn't see the names of the riders, so we didn't keep up with the standings. Here's one that didn't make the full ride.
We saw a few riders helped off the grounds, but no emergency vehicles were called in, and it didn't appear that anyone got seriously injured, which seems to me to be a very likely outcome.
Then we had the Mutton Bustin' which is always fun to watch. One little girl won first place in this. Most of the kids barely got out of the chute, but some made it a few steps. This one didn't last very long.
But this one got in a little bit of a ride.
We had a drone overhead too.
It was a fun evening. Pro rodeo's top 40 bull riders competed for a $40,000 purse. It was over about 9:30, and we were ready to get off those bleachers! We are going back Friday night for the first night of the Rodeo, which should also be a good time.
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