July 29, 2007

While reading about things to do in the Western Nebraska Official Travel Guide, I noticed that the Cheyenne County Fair and Rodeo started on July 25th. We decided to drive about 30 miles to Sydney and take in the fair. When we arrived at the fair grounds, we noticed there wasn’t much happening. There were some people with horses in the arena but no fair. The signs at the entrance stated the fair was July 30 – August 5. Looks like I made a mistake. We went to a horse show instead. It was fun to watch the competition. We saw kids that looked about 5 years old or younger to adult men and women showing and riding their horses. I think our favorite was very small boy showing his pony and then demonstrating his riding skills.





We saw a lot of great horse handling skills. No matter what the outcome in the arena, it looked like everyone had a goodtime.

After enjoying the riders and horses, we started back to the campground in Chappell. As we neared town, Richard suggested we take a drive around the area to look at some of the ranches. There is lots of land in Nebraska and the ranches a very large. We went past fields of alfalfa hay, sugar beets, wheat and oats stubble and just plain tilled earth. We saw lots of irrigation systems. Check out this picture. Some of these devises are a half-mile long. Most we saw were somewhat shorter.

We also saw a very large stack of straw bales near the road. We couldn’t resist going for a closer look. As you can see in the pictures below the bales and the stacks were very large.

One last comment, Vera confirmed that the magazine had printed the incorrect dates. We still had a good time even though we didn’t see the fair.