After stopping what seemed like a million times, I finally arrived in beautiful Orlando, Florida just in time for Miss Rodeo Utah (Martina Wardle) and I to be rushed to the rodeo grounds for the Silver Spurs Rodeo Pageant. It was a spectacular event and all of the girls did a great job. When the pageant was over Martina and I got to head to our host home for the week to get to know our family, they even made us a pink funnel cake since it was Valentines day:)
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| Martina, our host father Mr. Baker, and I |
Tuesday was our first day of doing school visits, the first school we went to it was kindergarten and first grades. At each visit we would tell about rodeo and what a rodeo queen was, but the best part was letting the kids participate in some of the events such as barrel racing, bull riding, and team roping. A group of queens would demonstrate the events before having the kids try, so I was assigned barrel racing and then being the wonderful steer all week for team roping!
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| Being roped by Martina and Kelsey |
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Wednesday was a day I'll never forget we got to go HOG HUNTING!! For those of you who don't know what exactly this entails, what we did was loaded all of us up in a couple of trucks and turned 3 dogs loss that had trackers on them to run out in front of us. The dogs would catch the hogs and get them pended down until one of us got there to tie up there legs to drag them back to the truck. As we hike into these creepy woods waiting for the dogs to get a hog down, finally its time and we take off running until we were at a lake and of course the guys didn't stop and just ran in after some of us talked about some of us girls ran in too. Waist high in water looking for the hog we finally tie it up and drag it out. As we get to shore the guys thought it would be funny to tell us that the lake we were just in is the most gator populated lake around. Not in ten minutes later the dogs had another hog down and we were off on a run again. It was an amazing experience and I wouldn't have traded it for anything.
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| Rodeo Queens with the hog we caught |
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After being out till 2 am chasing hogs we didn't get any break we had to be up bright and early to visit schools then it was off to the beach. The sun was shining and we all had a great time laying out on the beach and Miss Rodeo America even learned how to surf, but at the end of the day I was the only girl who didn't get burnt hahaha:) Then it was off to air boating which is like boating only you can drive up on land we got to see several gators, birds, and even a couple cows, but the best was watching the sunset which the drive had timed to take only 2 minutes it was an amazing view.
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| Can you find me? |
< Left: Jumping in the ocean
Right > Writing my name and MRW in the sand.
Friday it was time for the rodeo to begin, we were each given our horse and mine was a black and white paint named Katie. Originally we were all going to be bring in our state flags, but instead we got to do presentation runs and I'm happy to say no one fell off! After grand entry we would break up and go to the VIP section to thank all the sponsors of the rodeo and just get a chance to talk with the crowd.
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| Miss Rodeo New Mexico and I on our horses |
The last day we split up and went to different amusement parks, so my group went to Disney and had a great day riding the rides and getting to go to a 3D show. Also while I was in Florida I got to ride the Farris wheel, Miss Rodeo California and I had never been on one and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try it well as we get on and slowly go around we both decided to stick to horses cause being that far off the ground was not for us.
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| Me, Laura Kessler, and Miss Rodeo California |
I would like to thank everyone who made this trip so amazing such as my host family the Baker's, Laura Kessler who said I was her favorite;), and all of the girls who are making this year more than anything I ever dreamed of.
Thank You,
Amanda Emerson
Happy Trails and God Bless!
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