Day 77 - Saturday, August 16 - Virden, Manitoba

We left Brandon this morning.  Thank goodness the weather prediction for a thunder storm with rain and hail didn't happen last night.  As we passed the Assiniboine River along Hwy 1 we see that the River is still at its banks and very muddy.  It wouldn't take much for it to flood again.  Along the way we see many fields are still under water. 

Finally we see some trees and fields of sunflowers ready for harvesting.  It is very overcast and hazy today, but it should only be about 25 degrees today, so that's good.  Sunglasses not required!

And still major construction everywhere you go. 

We are in Virden, Manitoba now and got here just in time to watch the rodeo parade.  

Virden Indoor Rodeo Wild West Daze is the weekend that we stumbled upon.  The Parade:

A good rodeo parade for the size of the town.  Lots of entries.  After the parade we went to the Lion's Campground and booked for two nights so we can attend the rodeo.

We went to the High School Rodeo performance at the Tundra Oil & Gas Centre.  Oil and gas are big here in Virden.  There are three big oil companies with many wells here.  So anyway we went to the rodeo - long time since we have been to a high school rodeo.  It was good, lots of talent.  We noticed that there were a few entries from North Dakota and wondered if it was co-approved.  I asked a lady and she told me that they have kids from North Dakota, Eastern Saskatchewan and Western Ontario that belong to their association due to the distances - it is closer for them to come to Manitoba.  This lady happens to be on the Scholarship Commiittee for the Manitoba Assoc. and parked near Pat Kerr at the Nationals and they were discussing scholarships -  small world!   This is the groomer they have - it works awesome - too bad we don't have one at home for our rodeo grounds.

After the performance we drove around to see what Virden was all about.  I haven't had cell service since we left Brandon so I went into The Source here to see if he could help me figure this out - I must be doing something wrong.  He told me that Telus doesn't have any service here but they are putting up three towers that should be up and operating soon.  Hmmm, all the way across Canada and this is the first place without service.  Oh well we will just have to wait until Monday to check emails, etc. - we are expecting baby news from the coast - hope it doesn't happen until we have established communications once again.  

Anyway the Manitoba Rodeo Cowboys Assoc. Performance was at 7:30 pm so we got there early.  Good thing as the seats were filling up when we got there!  Pretty popular event.  The rodeo is Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday is called Sunday Showdown - they take the top 10 timed events and top 6 in the rough stock for Sunday.   

There are a lot of other events going on too - Heavy Horses, Demolition Derby and a few other things such as pancake breakfast, concerts, rodeo dance.  Busy weekend.  

Good performance - looking forward to tomorrow's as well.