All-Florida Championship Rodeo, Arcadia

(Wauchula, FL) Hi 73 Lo 44 --  We had tickets for the Arcadia All-Florida Championship Rodeo, so after a good breakfast and some email and blog reading we headed  to Arcadia, about 25 miles south of us.  The events started at 1pm, and we got there around 12:30. 

The parking lots around the rodeo arena were pretty full, but a lot of the locals were parking cars in their yards (for a fee of course). We parked in one of these private yards about a block from the arena. We walked around the arena to soak in the atmosphere and check out the food stands, and to take lots of pictures of horses, bulls, sheep, and everything else involved in a rodeo we took out seat to get ready for the preliminary event, a wild west shootout. It was a skit set in the 1800’s in a town with a saloon, dancing girls, bad guys in black hats and good guys in white hats.  Two gals got into a fight over a man, then decided to settle it with a duel. They stood back-to-back, took 20 steps, turned around and both of them shot the guy. They cleaned out his pockets and returned to the saloon. That was one part of the skit, but the whole thing was a real hoot!





The rodeo started promptly at 2:00. There were all the standard rodeo events, and the show moved on at a quick pace.

There was bronco busting, both bare back and saddle bronc.



Calf roping and steer wrestling.

They did a great equestrian event called a quadrille. It’s like square dancing on horses. They did circles around each other, weaving routines, and pinwheels. Very interesting and beautifully done.


Barrel racing, a women's event, was fun to watch. You really got to see how fast those beautiful horses can run!


This was a 6-year old girl making a barrel racing run on her pony. The pony got a little spooked, so she was led around most of the course. It was so cute.


This was the funniest event of the whole day, the calf scramble. They invited all the kids in the audience to come down to the arena floor. They then let loose three calves with red ribbons on their tails. They ran all over the place and the three kids who grabbed the ribbons got some prizes. Like a crazy game of flag football.
 
At the end of the event the p.a. announcer said the last kid back over the rail and into the stands would have to go to summer school.  It was hilarious, they went in all directions.  Some of the little tykes had no clue which direction they came from, so their parents had to come get them. 

One cute event was called "mutton busting." They put a 4-6 year old child on the back of a sheep and see how long he or she can hang on. The one who stays on the longest distance is the winner. Most of them didn't make it very far, but a couple of them went for quite a ride. This little fella didn't even make it out of the gate.


And of course there was bull riding. A post was right in our way during most of this event. Not very many riders made it the required 8 seconds.

It was a fun time and the weather was perfect. We enjoyed it so much we're planning to go back again next year. Hopefully we'll get some seats farther away from a post. It was a wonderful day of fun in the little town of Arcadia.
 
Thanks to Google maps app on our Droid phones we took some back roads out and beat the traffic. We stopped for dinner at Beef-o-Brady's in Arcadia, then went back to our little part of paradise.

Florida Trivia:  Plant City, the Winter strawberry capital of the world, holds the Guinness record for the world’s largest strawberry shortcake. The 827 square-foot, 6,000 pound cake was made on Feb 19, 1999 in McCall Park.

24 days till we head North.