Dani's Dirt

Guess wheerrrrreeee I’veeee beennnnnn…

Did you pick up on the excitement in that first sentence? If not, and if the title wasn’t a dead give-away, well then I’ll just tell you.

This past weekend My Someone and I traveled out to Colorado/Wyoming to attend Cheyenne Frontier Days. CFD is the world’s largest outdoor rodeo and western event.

It’s amazing.

Well, if that kind of thing is your cup of tea. It happens to be ours.

I’d like to offer my now official veteran advice to anyone who would like to attend in the future, but I can’t. I totally cheated on trip planning this go-around.

My cousin, Kristin just so happens to work for the tourism department for the state of Wyoming. (I know, poor thing ;)) So a few months ago when I mentioned wanting to attend CFD, she took it and ran. She organized the entire trip, sent links to everywhere I needed to purchase tickets from and even emailed a PDF of the trip itinerary, complete with addresses, phone numbers and official CFD header.

She made my life easy-peasy.

I was impressed, My Someone pointed out it wasn’t hard to see Kristin and I are related. (Whatever man, ultra-organized, list making, event coordinating is a virtue to be treasured.)

So off to Cheyenne we went…

We began our CFD adventure with a FREE pancake breakfast. This might not sound like a big deal, but this breakfast is open to everyone. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this event, close to 40,000 attend, more than 100,000 pancakes are made from 5,000 pounds of pancake mix, 3,000 pounds of ham are cooked, 9,200 cartons of milk and 520 gallons of coffee are served, along with 630 pounds of butter and 475 gallons of syrup.

When My Someone and I got in line, we were over a mile away from the serving station. Even though Kristin assured us the line moves fast, we had our doubts, but the people watching was suburb so we stuck it out.

25 minutes later we had our breakfast. Yes, it went that fast. It was impressive.

Kristin ensured that both days we were at the rodeo our experience would be different. The first day our seats were right over the bucking chutes and the second day our seats were on the opposite side of the arena where we could also watch all the side shows that happen during the rodeo. While the first day’s seats were in the middle of all the action, second day’s seats were better for photos.

The second day of our CFD experience we plopped down on the sidewalks of downtown Cheyenne and waited for the parade to start. There were two men next to us, right before the parade started they got up and left, leaving behind their backpack. In a matter of minutes we had police surrounding us and the parade was put on hold. (Of course, this stuff always happens when I’m around.) Bomb dogs were then brought in to check out the bag. Once it was given the all clear and My Someone had identified the backpack’s owners the parade was back in session… (Whew!)

After surviving one jam packed, eventful weekend and a 10 p.m. Sunday flight out of Denver, I’ve spent Monday and today like this…Oh well, you only live once… Or as my Cajun beginnings would say, Laissez les bons temps rouler.

Until next time!