For three weeks every March, Houston hosts the largest rodeo in the world, along with a livestock show and a fairground / carnival. We go to events like county shows and the Game Fair in the UK, but my trip there this month was my first time at any kind of state fair type event in the US, or rodeo anywhere.
I was in the area for several days before going to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and there were people who looked the part in the hotel and the odd vehicle carrying livestock, but as I got close to the venue on the day, it all became very noticeable, especially pickups with fifth-wheel couplings and horse or livestock trailers.
The venue is the NRG Park on the south side of the city, which includes the main NRG Stadium used for American football, the now disused Houston Astrodome, the NRG Center exhibition hall, and the smaller NRG Arena stadium.
The shopping area is in the NRG Center with about a mile of stalls in half a dozen rows. As well as agricultural products like John Deere tractors and cattle crushes, there are lots of homeware and clothes shops including stalls selling premium cowboy hats with while-you-wait steam fitting services – you can see the puffs of steam in the last picture.
Rather than get a big hat which would look a bit out of place in England, I decided to get a Houston show and rodeo belt buckle from A Cut Above Buckles. Lovely quality and very solid.
The back of the NRG Center is given over to livestock waiting to be judged in various competitions, in a small arena that’s surfaced with green shredded paper. Nearby are the rows and rows of cattle with farming families watching over them on folding chairs; and about an acre of pigs in pens. I explored the site a bit further to find the NRG Arena which was quiet that early in the day and having horse displays.
In the space around the big buildings is the Carnival, with multiple big wheels and other rides, food stalls, and small shows. You don’t tend to think of woodlands when someone mentions Texas although it does have a lot of forested areas. The show and rodeo are naturally focussed on cattle and horses and I didn’t expect to see anything related to forestry. However, I did manage to find a lumberjack show, with axe throwing and saws, but they had been imported specially from Canada.
I went on a weekend when the rodeo itself starts early in the afternoon, with a parade of the horse riders and wagons snaking round the floor of the NRG Stadium. It was almost empty at that point but steadily built up all afternoon and by the time of the after-show – an hour long concert by Kelly Clarkson – it was full to its seventy thousand seat capacity. I’ve never been to a rodeo before and it was very easy to follow and there was always something to see, with gaps filled in with interviews and commentary. I was up in the gods right at the back but I’d brought the compact binoculars I use at Century Wood.
While I was in Houston I also found a 1930s replica of a big log cabin, The Pioneer Memorial Log House, right in the middle of the huge medical district with world-class hospitals and research centres towering over it. It is supported by the San Jacinto Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a lineal organisation with membership restricted to women who can prove descent from someone who “rendered loyal service” to the Republic of Texas during its decade existing as an independent country in the 1830s and 40s.
Houston has a good selection of museums that I just didn’t have time to visit, including an important natural history museum and a major art gallery. Instead I went to the Houston Zoo. Sealions, sharks, turtles, penguins, lions, tigers, alligators, elephants, giraffe, jaguars, leopards, and a lot more capybaras than Shropshire’s own Hoo Zoo. I did get some pictures of this black bear. Smaller than England’s lost European Brown Bears and already impressive in its size and obvious power. I was lucky to see it running around and playing with a football, demonstrating the fluidity of its movements despite its size and its dexterity with the ball.
The highlight of these other visits though was Space Center Houston, which is adjacent to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. A lot of original artefacts on display, including space suits still smeared with grey moondust, the Mercury Faith 7, Gemini V, and Apollo 17 capsules. A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket of the type used to launch the Starlink satellites I rely on at Century Wood. A Saturn V rocket and Apollo spacecraft assembled from flight-ready components from the cancelled Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions – just huge.
The highlight of the highlight was the trip into the Johnson Space Center campus to visit the original 1960s and 70s Mission Control. We sat on the original seats of the viewing gallery used by families, VIPs, and journalists to watch missions. NASA had renovated the whole room after it was replaced by a newer control room in the same building.
Now there is a replay of the final couple of minutes of Apollo 11’s first moon landing, with the various computer displays and big screens each showing what the team and visitors would have seen. The images and original audio replay as Neil Armstrong again makes his last minute change to the landing site to avoid boulders and brings the lander down with his display showing only 25 seconds of fuel left.
Sometimes you just have to commit.