So this morning, Bill and Leslie drove up from their RV site in Falls City and picked us up in Sunny, the yellow Jeep. Lynden is located due north on I-5, almost all the way to the Canadian border, about an hour 's drive from Riverbend RV Park.
After snacks of bacon-on-a-stick, corn on the cob and corn dogs, we wandered through many of the exhibit barns. One of the surprises for me was the large number of dairy cattle. Watching some of the FFA members show their cows, I realized that was one animal I had never learned to judge in my 4-H days.
The draft horse pulling contest was being held in a large arena building. There were seven teams of two horses harnessed to a singletree that was hooked to a sled filled with 500 pound barrels of concrete. They started with a load of 7500 pounds of weight on the sled and added more barrels of concrete at first in 1000 pound increments, then 500 pounds as the sled got heavier.
Each team took its turn to be hitched to the weight sled. They had to pull it twenty feet in order to progress to the next round.
Each team had a driver and at least one helper who would connect the singletree to the sled hitch. The horses were anxious to pull. The driver often had to back them up to the hitch several times before they would stand long enough to be connected. The first few rounds went very fast with the teams having no trouble pulling the load. But, as the pounds added up, more and more teams were eliminated. The driver had to make sure the horses didn't get too anxious and pull the sled before they were ready to pull together. Once the sled moved, distance was measured and counted. Each team got two tries to pull each weight level. The winning team pulled 9500 pounds!
Later in the afternoon we went over to the grandstand to watch the horse show. This was a drill team composed entirely of draft horses under saddle! They were really quite good. It was fun to watch such huge animals performing so gracefully.
This is an eight-hitch Shetland pony team. There were six of these teams. After they paraded around the arena fence, they were turned loose for open driving. It was quite entertaining to see an arena full of pony hitches and wagons wheeling and turning. It was amazing driving -- and none of them ran into another!
This is what I had been waiting for: the six-hitch draft horse teams.
What a sight to see these beautiful teams. There were nine of them. Sixty-four big draft horse teams all in the arena at the same time. The announcer said that there was at least $100,000 worth of tack and wagon for each team -- and that's not even counting the cost of the horses!
These teams also were turned loose for free driving. Though not as quick as the pony teams, we still saw some incredible driving as they wheeled and turned in the arena.
The show ended with some pony chariot races and some playday horse game demonstrations. We had a great time watching it all.
We ended the evening at Billy McHale's Steakhouse in Bellingham. Leslie and I shared a scrumptious rib eye steak while Forry ate an immense bleu cheese burger and Bill had their steak and prawn meal. It was a good day made even better by sharing it with good friends!
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