Dateline August 25: Oh, Sedgewick!

We were up with the birds this morning (or maybe before them) and we trailered from Hardisty to Lougheed where we tacked-up in almost gale force winds. How windy was it? It was so windy that I ran without my tarp on the Wild Pink Yonder pink wagon.  For the most part, we ran directly into the wind and at the end of the day my face is so wind-burned that it’s purple!

It was a good run though; we held a steady, fast pace doing 17.5 klicks in about 2 hours (that’s fast for us).

At the edge of Sedgewick we were met by a couple driving a team and a beautiful wagon; we were out-pinked by our hosts! Their horses were pink. Their wagon was pink. Even the spokes on their wagon were pink! They led us around town showing us all of the pinkification.

There were so many neat things to see in Sedgewick that I don’t know where to start – or end. They sold 60 custom made, hand-painted pink bird houses and mounted them on trees and posts and pillars
around town.

They wrapped the base of every pole in town with pink plastic.  People everywhere were wearing pink (clothing) or being pink (hair, moustache).

The Town of Sedgewick even pinkified an old house and garage that they owned, creating the most fantastic pinkification project I’ve seen in some time!  They painted the bottom half of the house pink and the top half white, and raised over a thousand dollars by selling the opportunity to put the name of cancer survivors, those who were lost to cancer, and those still fighting cancer on the house!

They called it “The House of Hope”.  And when the minister in the church next door rang the church bells as we drove by, it brought me to tears!

This may be the pinkest town we’ve seen so far.  Pink trees. Pink ornaments in trees. Pink yard ornaments. Pink fences. Pink concrete bases at the service station and at least four pink garage doors! Even the sign at the entrance to Sedgewick was painted pink!

Our home for the night is on the rodeo grounds but they’re having their annual Rough Stock Rodeo so we can’t have the pen. We loved watching the heavy horse pulls and the mini horse chucks and then they had the wild pony race. Wild Pink Yonder entered two teams! We beat the little kids – ha ha ha! (I do mean LITTLE – one of the kids on one of the teams couldn’t have been more than 6 years old *grin*)

Sedgewick Lions did a bang-up private dinner for us: ham, scalloped potatoes, fabulous salads – all the trimmings and half a dozen different homemade desserts.

Next, its back to the rodeo grounds for more fun with the Sedgewick ladies in pink – they’re nuts – completely insane! And we LOVE them! (And we whupped them in the wild pony race!)

Tonight looks like it might be an evening that gets right out of control. I think I’ll go to bed early knowing that Sedgewick really supports “the pink”.  This is a nifty little town!