Yeehaw!! The Ellensburg Rodeo

We have been to Ellensburg quite a few times. J’s grandma lives there, and every time we go we learn something new about the place. This time, having arrived there on the Labour Day weekend, we went to the Ellensburg Rodeo and Fair. We don’t usually partake of this rodeo stuff but Gramma J had asked us to come for several years and finally, we went. Well, I guess the Ellensburg Rodeo gives out the third largest prize in the country so, as far as rodeos go, this is a pretty big one. We had arrived on the last day of the four day event, so the best of the best were competing for the big prize. I took quite a few pictures of the competitors, mainly to practice my high-speed motion capture skills, as you can see from the picture above (it’s not the best picture mind you), I not only caught the bull in mid-air but also a fair amount of bull snot as well.

The Ellensburg Fair was a good old fashioned country fair, with rides for the kids and lots of fair-type stuff to buy and lots of fair-type food to eat. Everyone in town shows up, resplendent in cowboy boots and hats and spends the day getting a sunburn. For us, it was a great day in the heat, we managed not to get sunburnt, and we drank gallons of old fashioned lemon-aid to stave off dehydration. (To read about our hair-raising experience with dehydration click here)

The next day it was back on the bikes for the ride home. We decided we would go home by way of Steven’s Pass. This part of our journey we had also done a couple of times before but the best way to do it is in the sun. Especially when going up and over the 4061ft of the pass through the Cascade Mountain range. Once over on the other side, the plan was to go up State Route 9/Baker Highway and stop at one of the pubs some where along the way for dinner.

That was the plan. Incidentally I looked up that quote, you know the one. It goes: “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry” and it was written by that famous Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. Obviously things don’t change much.

Anyway, a huge section of Highway 9 was under construction so we took one of the roads through Lake Stevens and Granite Falls. Once in Granite Falls, a couple of guys we stopped to ask directions of, sent us off north, up Jordan Road to Arlington. It was a quiet winding country road that followed, for the most part, along the an arm of the Stillaguamish River and brought us out to Arlington where we again met up with Highwa 9. This little detour put us about an hour and a half behind our “Kind-of-Schedule” (by this point we had given up trying to have “A Schedule”) and starving. To remedy this, we stopped at the first pub we found, the Big Lake Bar and Grill.

The Big Lake Bar and Grill overlooks Big Lake and is a pretty nice place to stop for a bite. It has a bit of a 1950′s vibe and the locals drop by there for a pint and to buy squares on the local and state football pools. The food is good, not fantastic but good and the halibut fish and chips I ordered was just about what you would expect from a nostalgic 50′s diner. Our entire meal came to just over C$17.00, not bad I would say.

So we rode home in the darkening twilight, bellies full, a few more clicks on the bikes and a pretty good adventure to write about.

See below for route map.