Kennedy Ranch Mission: Ranch Rodeo

The Deseret Ranch Rodeo was held on Friday, March 16th. This is an annual event that they have been doing for 62 years!! We had been looking forward to this because we had just missed it when we arrived on April 1st last year. The rodeo is put on by the cowboys on the ranch and all proceeds are donated to the Central Florida chapter of Boy Scouts of America. Admission is an affordable $5 with children 6 and under FREE! A BBQ dinner including drink could be purchased for $6 with a corn dog dinner for $4. Additional drinks, popcorn, and candy sold for $1. T shirts and caps were also sold. Many calls came into the Carroll House for weeks before the rodeo for information about this very popular event!

The day of the rodeo the elders were busy cleaning up the rodeo grounds. Actually, seems like they were doing things related to the rodeo all week! The sisters not assigned to tours helped package the food in single serving portions. We did a tour in the morning and a BIG tour (with mostly Kennedy guests from the Tampa Bay area) in the late afternoon. We later found out we could/should have closed the visitors center in the afternoon! The Kennedys also were invited to the youth camp for lunch because the Ft. Lauderdale Stake Young Women had been camping there all week. We enjoyed that!

Our guests for the rodeo: Patrick's family, Bill & Ann Edwards, Roger & Jan Edwards, John & Debbie Dickson (Pat's in-laws), Lance, Nancy , & John Clark (friends of Pat & Heather), Lee & Marlene Robinson (Nancy Clark's parents), Jim & Jan Hunt (friends from St. Pete), and the Ben & Carlie Welling family including Carlie's stepfather Jesse. What fun!! Pat & Heather and the Clarks even camped out on the Carroll House lawn Friday night before returning home on Saturday. It took us a few days to recover which was a not-so-subtle reminder of our advancing age!

The day after the rodeo, a Jacksonville woman who attended our rodeo commented that she had been to many rodeos throughout her life and our rodeo was the most enjoyable. Why? "because it was so clean, i.e. no drinking, no smoking, no profanity, no smokeless tobacco, very family-oriented." We even had an opening prayer! We look forward to attending the rodeo next year with some friends who could not make it this year.

A big THANK YOU to Renee Jacobsen for sharing her rodeo pictures! Check out her website:
http://www.reneejacobsenphotography.com