Rattlesnake Roundup Experience
Mike & I move a lot; as you may have noticed. When we moved, we decided that wherever we were, we wanted to experience the culture as much as we could. We knew there wasn’t going to be a forever length that we would be living or staying in the same place. With that information, I really wanted to make the most of it. We decided that we needed to dive in head first & we sure did.
Me in front of one of my favorite murals in Baton Rouge!
When we first moved to Louisiana it took us awhile to to figure out how to live out the culture. What we discovered was that going to the events that people felt were important allowed us to have sneak peek into the lives of Louisianans and before we knew it we understood some of the most important parts of their culture,. For Louisiana, this involved LSU games, crawfish boils, frozen daiquiris (any drunk frozen like that) and fishing with a dash of looking for alligators. We lived that out to the fullest, it was something else!
We loved taking the canoe & kayaks out. In Louisiana, we could load the kayaks onto the truck, hop in, and within 5 minutes have a great spot to drop in!
Now, we are on to Texas and it is a whole new world!
To begin with, Texas isn’t humid.. at all, which is incredible as someone who has spent their entire life in humid climates. Also, people are so kind and supportive here. Southern hospitality seems to be alive and well down in the Abilene, Tx area. There are so many ways that this place has been beneficial for us. We love the climate & all adventures.
We dove fast and hard into the texan culture and this past week that meant going to the rattlesnake roundup. We love all of these new and wild adventures that we never dreamed were possible.
The Rattlesnake Roundup was something I never would have thought I would spend any of my time at. However, when it came up we jumped at the opportunity. I mean come on, the event was 30-45 minutes from our house and was located in a town called Sweetwater. It has been so fun getting to experience these adventures that I never knew even existed; much less something that I would do. The most exciting part of this is that everyone goes all out when it comes to any of these weekend events! These events are huge. We are talking carnival rides, fair food, tons of vendors to shop from, the main attraction (The Rattlesnakes), they also have gun & ammo auctions. Overall, it is such a fun time and best yet everything is family centered.
Taking pictures at the Rattlesnake roundup. It was so texan and so fun Still so happy
The Rattlesnake Roundup was unlike anything I could have expected. It was at the Sweetwater fairgrounds and they had this expo center that had a dirt floor. They had vendors around the edges of the space, they had four pits of snakes, they had s single place for unique and handmade drinks, they had an area where they skinned the snakes, an area where they chop the heads off, you could watch them be milked (this is when they get the snakes to release their venom), lastly, through all of these events they were educating everyone who came about how to identify them in the wild to how to prepare them. This event happens yearly and the venom is sold back to the hospital to use as anti-venom.
The event is Friday to Sunday on the second weekend in march every year. We spent about four hours there on Saturday afternoon and we felt like that allowed us to see all we could see and enjoy it all. We watched Ms. Texas milk the rattlesnakes as well. Mike and I are still so interested in whether she knew this would be part of her job when she signed up for the pageant. It was such a neat experience in Texan culture. We had the best time.
Now that you know about the extra requirement to be Ms. Texas?
