{"id":13524,"date":"2024-09-01T13:14:23","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T20:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=13524"},"modified":"2024-09-01T13:14:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T20:14:23","slug":"fair-and-rodeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=13524","title":{"rendered":"Fair and Rodeo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ellensburg has a major rodeo and the County holds a fair each year ending on Labor Day (?). Not counting the preparations, things begin to happen a week before as the rides, food vendors, and commercial booths arrive. This year the opening was on Thursday. Festivities will finish on Sunday, and take-down will be Monday. Typical scenes {from the web} are below:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Ellensburg-Rodeo-and-Fair.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"731\" height=\"549\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13522\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Ellensburg-Rodeo-and-Fair.png 731w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Ellensburg-Rodeo-and-Fair-300x225.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\nThe Rodeo is a big draw, bringing participants from all the western states, including Texas and South Dakota. The image at the top left is about all I could see as the Fair and Rodeo are separate entries. All the rodeo folks will leave Tuesday for the next event with big money awards.<\/p>\n<p>After staying away for 25 years, I volunteered to be a &#8220;greeter&#8221; at the Adult Activity Center&#8217;s Lounge &#8211; &#8211; 2 hours each on Thursday and Saturday. The Lounge provides a cool spot with ice water, lemonade, coffee, and cookies. I am allowed free parking and entry to the Fair grounds. The Rodeo is a different entry, but its presence is the most impressive aspect. As mentioned, folks come from many places with trucks, trailers, horses, dogs, kids, and western hats. If you don&#8217;t have one, you can buy one for $25 and up. See the lower right photo. Anything else western can be purchased, such as boots, handbags, jewelry, . . ., generators, and hot tubs.<br \/>\nPrices (to me) seem exorbitant. A stuffed toy horse was $20. Cotton Candy  = $7; a simple hot dog = $8; fancy &#8220;Big Dogs&#8221;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/minimelts-ice-cream-cups-300x169.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-13523\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/minimelts-ice-cream-cups-300x169.png 300w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/minimelts-ice-cream-cups.png 412w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/> = from $12 to $16. A pounder baked potato with multiple toppings = $12. Lemonade for $6, $9, and $12. Maybe that was the pricing on the little cups of mini ice cream balls. I passed on all the offerings.<br \/>\nFor my role as greeter, I arrived about 9:30 before most things were underway, such as the rides and food booths. Expecting hot and sunny, I choose the early shift from 10 to Noon. After Noon, the temperature and sun were uncomfortable but I might have been the only one in the crowd that cared. On Saturday, about half way back to the truck, a long-ago student and fair worker recognized me and I got a ride in an electric cart. We had about 2 minutes to reminisce.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday was P\u00e9tanque Day and on Friday the host of that venue came over and picked up some posts and used lumber for a new table to go beside his boulodrome. When I have cool and shade, I work on the landscaping near the house. The Raspberries that were against the house are gone [ think of them as a fire hazard gone] and I&#8217;m 75% done with rehabilitating the space with gravel and decorative rocks.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve order a foot massager with &#8220;soothing heat&#8221; to use while at computer tasks, a couple of three hours a day, especially in the evening. I get plenty of exercise during the day \u2013 one of the suggestions to relieve cold feet \u2013 but keeping feet moving while at a desk is not easy. This is not a very expensive device, so it seems to be a worthwhile experiment.  It is to arrive on Wednesday. A report will follow in a month.<\/p>\n<p>And so august ends.<br \/>\nKeeping Track<br \/>\non the Naneum Fan<br \/>\nJohn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ellensburg has a major rodeo and the County holds a fair each year ending on Labor Day (?). Not counting the preparations, things begin to happen a week before as the rides, food vendors, and commercial booths arrive. This year the opening was on Thursday. Festivities will finish on Sunday, and take-down will be Monday. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=13524\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fair and Rodeo&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-3w8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13525,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13524\/revisions\/13525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}