Silver Spurs Rodeo

February 11-18th:

Finally, time for everyone to head south to the largest sanctioned rodeo East of the Mississippi River! 23 visiting state queens flew into Orlando to attend the 130th Silver Spurs Rodeo in Kissimmee, FL. Even my parents were even able to come all the way from South Dakota. We all had so much fun and stayed so busy it seemed like the week just flew right by. I roomed at Regina's house with Miss Rodeo SD, ND, UT and KS. We also had Miss Teen Rodeo FL & her mother staying out there with us - so we had a full house. We also had a lonnnnng drive everyday back and forth to the house, about an hour each way. Our wheels of choice? A 2013 ecofriendly, extra-compact, red, Yaris that we liked to call the Red Rocket! How did we come by this sweet ride, you may find yourself asking? Well, that's a long story. It started when I left work Monday to head to my house, grab some things, and start my trip down to Kissimmee. I almost made it home when the ol' Mazda started acting up. I lost power steering, radio went out, and the lights on my dashboard were trying to give me a seizure they were flashing so much. I limped into the driveway of my house, shut it off and tried to restart it. Fail. It wouldn't roll over, but kept making a clicking noise. Great. About four hours, $400 and a tow truck later I found myself at the Hertz counter being handed the keys to my fancy new car for the week. When I went to the parking lot to find it, I was slightly disappointed. It was that moment when I decided to 'forget' my car magnets. I didn't want to be associated with this little car any more than I had to be! It did get good gas mileage though, and it got us where we needed to go! All 5 of us. We were stuffed in that car like sardines! There wasn't one time when we pulled into the rodeo grounds that someone didn't see us all falling out of it and make a comment about it! I guess everyone else was as amused about our ride as we were.

Other than our hilarious means of transportation, once we got where we needed to be we truly had a blast. We spent time visiting a handful of schools, going on a couple of airboat rides, holding live gators, tasting fried gator, turtle and frog legs. We also toured the Osceola Co. Sheriff's department and got to see the officers perform a working dog demonstration. They even invited us out to Lake X where they do training sometimes and put us to the challenge of making it through the ropes course. We went to Cocoa Beach one day as well, and even though the water was freezing cold everyone was so excited they jumped right in any way!

Running Time in a Car: 45h 10m
Running Mileage: 3059