A Rodeo Parade Through the Streets of Tucson, AZ

Rodeo week in Tucson is a huge event for its residents and includes a parade.  This year’s 89th parade was Feb. 20th. Even the schools are closed Thurs. and Friday for the parade and rodeo.  It was a pretty day for a parade.  We got up early and headed out for a quick breakfast to go.  We wanted to get a good spot early for good viewing.  The parade was to start at 9:00 AM. We thought we were going to park in the rodeo grounds parking lot. Wrong!  We headed in that direction but every street we tried to turn down was closed! The internet info on the parade said the streets would not close until 8:00 AM.  Wrong again! A couple of policemen directing traffic said the roads closed at 6:30 AM!   What a fiasco! We wound up turning and driving down part of the parade route.  Then the gate we wanted to enter was closed. We tried to go around but that street was closed as well!  Finally we saw a few empty spots at the city park across the street from the rodeo grounds but the road had cones across it.  So we just decided to move one of them to get to the park. By that time another police woman came over and asked what we wanted.  So after explaining, she kindly moved the cone for us and we FINALLY got to park!   We then walked over to the street and got a front row seating area around 7:30 AM and ate our fast food breakfast.  There was a continuous stream of people filling up every empty spot available.  It is said that 150,000 people line the streets for this parade! It is the longest non-motorized parade in the country.  

     

 

This cute little cowgirl above looked excited as she waited for the parade to start.  The woman rider above is a female bull rider! We have been to parades in several parts of the country and I am sad to say this was a terrible parade.  First of all, there were long gaps between the participants and they were walking and riding so slow.  Second, there were times when the whole  street part of our block was totally empty waiting for many long minutes for another group to catch up and come up the street.  It was so boring!  Plus, folding chairs get very uncomfortable after those long hours. There seemed to be more people just riding horses and horses pulling wagons with advertising local vendors than there were exciting colorful participants.  There were just a few of the old stage coaches and riders in period clothing of different groups, like soldiers, rangers, etc.  We didn’t even stay for the whole parade, after 3 hours we had had enough.  So we left disappointed and tired after making the effort to see, what we thought, was going to be an exciting parade.  

 

 

 

 

So….onto the rodeo on Saturday. Can hardly wait!