Sandy Downs — Local services in Idaho Falls

War Bonnet Rodeo - Perhaps worth attending if you're a local to the Idaho Falls / Blackfoot area but beware of the parking mafia.

I paid $36 for 2 general admission tickets and then they stuck me for another $5 for parking.

Big THUMBS DOWN to the War Bonnet Rodeo for charging $5 for parking this year. Not a peep about parking charges extra on the tickets or in the promo literature.

"The PRCA Rodeo will be from Thursday, July 31st – Saturday, August 2nd. ....blah.blah.blah...Event Ticket Prices: Children: $10 Adult : $18 (In advance) Adult: $20 (At the gate) VIP Ticket: $35 (Includes meal and beverages)

Basically charging for parking gives them a way to pay for all the programs they printed but no one wanted to buy.

Then they stuck these poor Idaho Falls youth baseball kids out at the gate to collect the money and the wrath of all the people who didn't know they had to pay to park!!! Poor poor planning on the part of the War Bonnet folks.

I am a Viet Nam era veteran living on a limited income and so I watch my budget pretty closely.

Now $5 isn't much but when you only bring $10 and it takes $5 to park that means that you don't get a waffle cone or any drinks and you get cranky with the poor kids that get stuck collecting the parking fee.

Sorry War Bonnet vendors - the parking mafia got your money...

The rodeo is well run, the purses are smaller than most moderately sized rodeos. The animals were more successful than the cowboys/cowgirls.

Bulls 5, Cowboys 0...

Sorry War Bonnet - I won't...

Came in from out of state to view not only the Quarter Horse races, but I wanted to experience the Indian Relay Races for the first time. It's a great little track! But, no luck on the main reason I came to town. I became aware of this type of Indian horse racing a couple of years ago and I brought friends up this weekend to see this unique form of horse racing. Apparently, the Professional Indian Horse Racing Assn decided at the last minute to not sanction the finals today. Though I was told via phone by the racing office at the beginning of this week that the finals were due to go off, most of the online ads were retracted at the last minute after we were already in town. When asking at the gate if the Indian Relay races would go off today, they were evasive with their answers. Nice little facility. Decent Quarter Horses & purses. But, clearly a bait & switch on the Indian...

For graduation?? Least favorite location that I've ever been to. Riding horses around with the flags was really cool, but we couldn't see most of the actual graduation. Terrible idea. Looks like a cool place in general, but I didn't really get to check it out or do anything. Also, the parking was lacking, but it looked like there was some proper parking on the far side from where we came in, across a big field. But maybe that doesn't belong to them because they didn't have us park there and they canceled my sister's archery class because of parking concerns...