Day 35 - Tuesday 12th July - At the Stampede

After a late breakfast at the excellent EasyOver restaurant Martin & I took the Silver Bullet to the GM garage to get a problem engine warning light sorted out. He is having a big problem with GM's warranty as they seem to ignore the conditions of his warranty. We then chilled out for a bit before setting off for The Stampede. The weather at this stage was great. The Stampede is an enormous event that takes place here annually lasting for 10 days. Each day the crowd can exceed 100,000! We visited an enormous tented area called Nashville North which has live country bands and beer. Most of the crowd dress in western/cowboy style and the atmosphere is electric - great fun. We had a burger then slowly made our way down Midway which is full of fairground type stalls.

We stopped at a few to bet on the various spinning wheels and bouncing balls and we were all quite lucky especially Heather who is on a very lucky streak. Martin had booked great seats for us in the giant stand and we settled down to watch the Chuck Wagon racing. Teams of 4 horses attached to a small wagon race around the showground. The start is an outrider throwing a stove into the back of the wagon then they're off! It is an amazing sight and full of colour.

While we were watching a friend of Heather had spotted us and invited us to their V.I.P. table before the entertainment show started. We managed this after no help from security but a bit of persistence on our part, their maxim seems to be if you have to ask you shouldn't be there! Our hosts were Randy & Holly and we had a great time there. Randy arranged for us to get some luxury outside seats under cover for the spectacular show. This was most fortunate as the heavens opened up with a spectacular show of it's own - we would have been soaked. We felt sorry for the poor folk! The show was absolutely fantastic and on an enormous scale.

On our way home we called into the Stampede Casino which was jumping - Heather, as usual, scooped some bucks! It was great fun watching her playing dice as she, like the rest of us, didn't have much of an idea what was going on however appeared to keep on winning! Don't ask about me! We got back to Heather & Martin's at 02.45 absolutely shattered but we had all had a brilliant day out!