We are back home now from a ten day trip to Ft. Worth, Texas. We had a great 24 hr drive, over 2 1/2 days with perfect weather and no problems.
Why were we headed to Ft. Worth?
We raise rabbits, and were headed there to attend the 83rd American Rabbit Breeders Association National Convention. So we loaded up our suburban with our suitcases, boys and 19 rabbits! Nine of the rabbits were ours and the rest we were transporting for a friend.
We started raising rabbits three years ago when we got involved in 4-H. The breed that we raise is Satins, a meat breed with incredible fur. We started out with three and now have 26, not including babies.
So back to our trip. This was our first national convention and the boys worked to earn all the money for the trip themselves (well most of it). They were showing their rabbits there and competing some difficult youth contests as well.
I sent out daily emails to our family and will attach them below for you...
Texas or Bust... Day 1
Hello from Kingman, AZ...
For those of you who don't know, we picked up a notebook last week when my computer was slowly dying. This is a great addition to our trip!
We planned to stay in the Grand Canyon tonight, but we looked at the overnight low (15 degrees) and decided that the rabbits might not agree with that. So we re-planned our trip and are in Kingman, AZ tonight. Tomorrow we will drive all the way to Amarillo, TX as it is the next place that has a low of 38 degrees and not 15 degrees. Then we will arrive early afternoon in Ft. Worth.
The rabbits all did great... we ran the a/c most of the way in the back for the rabbits. They enjoyed that a whole lot. ;o)
We found a Holiday Inn Express to stay at tonight (our new favorite) at a great rate. They have a really nice breakfast in the morning too!
We are going to change all the pee pads (puppy training pads) in the bottom of the carriers and feed the rabbits now, and then head to dinner. Hope we find something yummy...
Talk to you soon!
Texas or Bust... Day 2
We made it!!! It was a long day of driving, but we got in about 7:20 CA time and 9:20 TX time. We had great weather all day and a beautiful drive. Lot of antelope along the side of the highway. It was amazing to see them so close and in groups of about 15-20. There seemed to be lots and lots of road construction along this stretch (hwy 40), which slowed us down a lot. We also saw a few people traveling from CA and OR with rabbits! One of them was a pretty old motor home pulling an old horse trailer with carriers stacked almost to the top. We felt sorry for the cute little Jersey Wooley that we saw on top of the stack. There won't be any wool to blow off of him when they get there!
I told Mike that we should have used that window paint and painted a rabbit on the back window with ARBA on it... that way other rabbit travelers could recognize us!
We also passed a whole lot of trucks pulling horse trailers. I think that they were all cowboys heading to a rodeo. I know there is a big one in the Stockyards tomorrow night, where we are staying. I am not sure if we will have time to check it out though.
Bunnies are all still good! They don't seem to be too affected by it all.
We are check in at another Holiday Inn Express in Amarillo. We are anxious to see it during the daylight hours... At night it is lots and lots of lights! BIG city!!
We will leave here about 7 am (5 am to us) and head to Ft. Worth. We need to get there in the early afternoon as the boys have a California/Nevada team meeting for the youth competitions.
I will let you know how everything is tomorrow when we get settled.
ARBA... Day 1
We made it to the convention center today at about 1:45 pm - without a hitch. The trip from Amarillo was.. FLAT! Okay there were some mounds and some trees and that was about it. About an hour down the road... we were driving along... the sun was starting to peek up over the horizon... and we passed a "body" in the ditch next to the highway... in the middle of nowhere! Of course (because we have firefighter Mike on board), we backed up and Mike got out to investigate. Armed with his big "Maglite" he walked over to this man face down in the dirt, picked up a dirt clod and threw it before he got too close. Well he hit the guy in the butt! Boy that guy woke up real quick after that, and he had a look on his face like, "What did you do that for?" Mike asked him if he was okay, and then asked him to keep his hands up where he could see them. He was fine... he was probably seeing three of Mike and had a headache, but other than that he was fine. Mike suggested that he might want to get up and start walking, before someone else thought he was dead on the side of the road. How exciting!
We ate lunch in Bowie at the Dairy Queen - those are bigger than McDonalds out here! Bowie's high school mascot is the... Jackrabbit! That was the boys first taste of Texas culture in a small town. It was fun to see. Cody wanted to know why everyone talks that way... of course. We also saw gas for $1.98 at a Wal-Mart Supercenter. There is a Super Wal-Mart in just about every town and these towns are smaller than Patterson. I don't see why we can't have one in Patterson if they can have one...?
We pulled in and unloaded the rabbits, but we forgot to bring the cart to wheel them in. So we had to carry in all 19 rabbits, hay, feed and water. Won't forget that again! It took quite a while to get everyone checked in, couped, fed and watered - several hours in fact. Then the boys had a youth meeting and spent the rest of the time going over the different breeds with a friend.
The boys are busy studying as they have Breed ID and Judging tomorrow. The rabbit judging will start on Monday.
We went out to eat tonight at a resturant called Bennigans. It was great food! It is about 20 minutes away from the convention center in Ft. Worth and closer to the Stockyards. Boy were we surprised when our waiter came over and asked if we where here for the rabbit convention. We immediately asked how could she tell, and then began checking ourselves for rabbit fur, shavings, hay or urine stains. She said that she had run into some other people today that where here for the convention, and thought we might be here for that as well. Okay, so I guess that means that you can look at us and tell... we are officially "rabbit people". I never thought I would become one of them... ;o)
I am going to hit the hay (yes, there is hay of the floor of every hotel we have stayed in from the rabbits) and I will send a note tomorrow night. ARBA... Day 2
It is another late night and we are all exhausted again! Our day started out at 5:30 am... I got into the shower and got dressed and then Mike told me that it was really 4:30 and that I didn't really need to be up yet! Too late!
We got to the show room at 7 am, took care of the rabbits and met up with the boys teams. Turns out there were 35 kids competing in either Royalty, Breed ID or Judging from California. They all had on green t-shirts and it was cool to look out over all the hundreds of kids and see so much of California represented! We brought the most kids from our state out of all of them! This is huge as Indiana, Kansas, and Ohio usually dominate the youth competitions. We won't know how anyone did until Wednesday night at the youth banquet.
Mike was in charge of keeping track of the Jr. Team... Cody and three other boys that were all about 7-8 years old. He did a great job keeping these very active boys on track for the day. I stayed with Justin and Kyle's teams for the day. They ended up judging 6 different breeds of rabbits with four in each breed. They also identified 25 breeds of rabbits and cavies, plus their showroom variety, registration variety and class. No way Mike or I could do that! They did a great job and feel like they did well.
The bad news of the day was that California did not win the bid for the 2008 Convention. It will be in Louisville, Kentucky instead. Hopefully we will win it next year for the 2009 convention. :o(
Tomorrow morning the boys have their written test to take at 8 am and the judging starts for their rabbits at 8 am as well. There rabbits are up first... so Mike and I will be handling that with Russell's help. Then in the evening we have the Satin Banquet to go to. There the boys will be picking up their award for winning #1 in Red Satins for youth this year, making the top 25 overall (17), #2 in Chocolates, and #3 in Blues.
I will send an update when we get to our room before the banquet tomorrow!
PS. Good thing we don't have any spare room in the suburban... there are tons of rabbit vendors selling a lot of very cool stuff! Plus, Mike keeps trying to bring home mesquite wood home too!
ARBA... Day 3
The only word to describe today was... awesome! It was a really good day...
Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes today - it was a great birthday!
The boys will be coming home with a few awards from there rabbits this year! 248 Youth Satins were judged today and almost every rabbit that the boys brought placed in the top off their classes. Cody's broken buck "Lary" won Best Opposite Sex Variety out of 47 broken rabbits. Then Cody's chocolate buck "Texas" won Best of Variety out of 7 chocolates. In both of these varieties he was up against the best breeder in youth. Justin won Best of Variety in Reds out of 13. Kyle came in as a close second in the class of Intermediate Does. The judge said that he was having a hard time choosing as Kyle's rabbit had a better coat, but Justin's had tighter flesh condition. Justin's blue Otter won Best of Variety out of 9 - and he also beat the best Otter breeder. We were all very excited! During Best of Breed, Justin's red was looked at 5 times! In the end a Californian won Best of Breed with a Chinchilla for Best Opposite Breed.
So... tonight at the Satin Banquet they all learned how to pronounce "Ambrosino" during the awards. They now tell us that they will never forget how to pronounce it now. They always have an auction during the Satin Banquets to raise money for different things. Tonight was of the items was an old American Satin Breeders Association patch that is no longer available anywhere. It features a red Satin on it... Justin has been wanting this patch since he saw it on someones jacket last year at the Satin Nationals. So lets just say he spent almost all his money to get it in the auction... and got it! Of course the announcer said during the auction, "Please don't let this boy win... then I will have to pronounce his name!" Well, he did a good job and pronounced it correctly when Justin won the bid. They also announced that the 2008 Satin Nationals will be in Bloomington, Illinois.
Tomorrow the boys have interviews at 10:00 am for the Royalty contest. That is all they have tomorrow, so we should have some time to do some other things and maybe site see.
That is about all for today... I will check in again tomorrow.
ARBA... day 4
We are all getting pretty tired now and ready to sleep a little longer... We have had to get up at 5:30 am every morning and don't go to bed until 11-12 at night. 
The boys had their interviews today and all felt very good about them. Cody said that the lady interviewing him "creeped him out"... I think she scared him a little (I know that is pretty amazing for him). The rest of the day was spent checking out the vendors and watching other breed shows, talking to breeders, etc. At 3:00 the best in show started. First was youth and open cavies, and then youth and open rabbits. The was huge!!!!!!! It was like being at the Eukanuba dog show. Everyone votes for the judge that they want to judge best in show, when they turn in their entry. The rabbits are judged in groups - 5 of them. Then the winner from those groups goes on to be judged for best is show. There is no reserve in show at convention. The best of the best judges were selected and it was fun to see some of them for the first time. The winners were a black Havana in youth and a Dutch in open.
We had a GREAT Italian dinner with some friends tonight! The temperature has dropped by about 10-15 degrees today, so I am cold now. Bummer... had to buy an ARBA sweatshirt!
The boys are looking forward to the Banquet tomorrow night, but getting nervous to find out how they all did. We are hoping that we will have a little time tomorrow to get away from the showroom and do some sightseeing in the late morning/afternoon.
I will let you know tomorrow night how the boys end up doing... then we will pick up the rabbits at 7 am on Thursday and hit the road!
ARBA... Day 5
Today was last day at the convention. We pick up our rabbits first thing in the morning at the convention center and then hit the road!
Tonight we went to the Youth Banquet for the ARBA Convention... The room was huge - it was held in the grand ballroom. There were thousands of people there and all dressed to the hilt! Lots of awards were won by kids from California tonight! We discovered that the kids from Kansas, Indiana and Washington are hard to beat! They won even more awards... Justin managed to walk away with one award tonight and so did Cody. Justin won 2nd runner up for Duke and Cody won 1st runner up from Prince. They did a great job, especially their first year and we are proud of all of them! We got their scores back for their test, applications, judging, and breed id so they will know how to improve for next year. They all have definitely learned a lot!
We got to get away from the showroom for a while this afternoon and went down to the Stockyards. We ate all you can eat ribs for lunch, went shopping, went through the museum, and watched a cattle drive of longhorns. Cody even got up and sat on a long horn - we got a picture! It was nice, but the temperature dropped again today and we were cold and worn out.
I am not sure about our route home yet, we haven't checked the weather. We will be home sometime on Saturday though.
Looking forward to getting back home as we are all so tired. You know how you are tired after one day at a rabbit show? Five days on concrete, walking everywhere, no chairs, huge buildings, short on sleep, strange pillow/bed... make you feel pretty wiped out! My feet, legs and knees have just had it...
Now we will have plenty of opportunity to sit on the way home...
The road back home...
We had an uneventful trip home, other then we saw that same man on the side of the road on the way home... in the same place!
We managed to see the Grand Canyon on the way home, and have discovered that we will have to take some time to go back. We needed more time! It was breath taking.
We did a lot of sleeping on the trip home and I managed to finish reading the three books that I had picked out at the library. It was a historical fiction series that took place in Texas. So we had many discussions about Texas history because of it.
I will start posting some photo's soon...
Jennifer | 
Nov. 9, 2006 - Sounds like a great trip!
Yvonne :o)