On Saturday night we went to a PBR (Professional Bull Riders) Rodeo. Thirty cowboys who are members of the PBR were there to ride bulls. In order to receive a score for the ride, the cowboy must stay on the bulls back for eight seconds and must not touch the bull with his free hand. The judges score a maximum of 50 points for the bulls performance and a maximum of 50 points for the cowboys performance. After all thirty cowboys had ridden, there were only three qualified rides. The judges selected seven of the cowboys who did not have qualified rides, to come back and ride in the final round with the three who had qualified rides. In the end there were five qualified rides and two cowboys tied for first place with a score of 85.5 each.
This picture was taken just before the color guard presented the US flag, the State of Texas flag and a couple of other flags which I could not identify.
The cowboys were introduced one at a time and their home city and state were given. Many of them are from Texas but there were a couple from Florida, one from Tennessee, a couple from Oklahoma and one from Australia.
This is about the best picture we were able to get of the cowboys in action, due to the light level the shutter speed was too slow to stop the movement of the cow and cowboy.
There was an event for the children to try their hand at riding a sheep. The sheep are sheared but a wide strip is left un-sheared around the sheep's shoulders. The children generally lay on their stomach on the sheep's back and wrap their legs around the sheep's belly and hang on for as long as they can. The little boy and girl shown with the trophies were judged as having the best ride. They appeared to be about 8-9 years old. There were several as young as three years old.
On Sunday we rode from Fredericksburg out to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. This large outcropping of pink granite is a popular local hiking spot. We however were not inclined to do any hiking on this day.
There were several folks climbing on the rock, a couple of them are near the upper right in this photo.
