Cowboy Up at the Hamel Rodeo

One of the things I like about living in the Twin Cities is that you can quickly get outside of the city and find yourself in the county.

This means it's pretty easy to take a one-day road trip and in that small amount of time, feel like you've really gotten away from your city stress.

For example, a friend and I hit up the Hamel Rodeo. It was a 20 minute drive to get to the rodeo grounds, and once we were there, we weren't in the city any more. We were surrounded by cowboy hats, cowboy boots and Budweiser.

The rodeo started at 7:30 pm and didn't finish until 10 o'clock.

Cowboys rode bucking broncos and topped the night off with the grand finale -- bucking bulls.

Cowgirls competed in barrel racing, a touring family of cowboys wowed us with fancy rope tricks and then more cowboys participated in calf-roping events.

The Hamel Rodeo claims it is the largest rodeo in the state of Minnesota, which I find amazing considering it's so close to Minneapolis.

By far, the best thing we took from the night was a line uttered by the announcer, who yelled while pumping the crowd at the start:

"Let's cowboy up and getter done!"