And they're off......

We went to my first horse racing event at Canterbury Park. This place is only a 30 minutes drive from our house, but it sure is out in the middle of 'no where' or so it seems.... We first found out about this place in our happenings coupon book and wanted to use the buy one get one admission coupon. But then we read they had a $1 night every Thursday night, so we decided to hit that instead. We went with my co-worker, Jolene and her husband, Josh. They had also never been. It was a really nice park, a lot bigger than I expected. I got up close for the 3rd race, which was 5 furlongs long.

We didn't go there to BET, mainly just for the experience. But we did place a bet on one of the races, the fifth one. We bet 'place' on horse 2-Dixie Princes from Long Lake, MN and 3-Go Doll from Marquette, NE; kyle put $1 on 'Exacta' that predicted #3 would come in first and #6 - Simply Flawless would come in second (that's a big winner if you won) but sadly we did not win anything. Here is Jolene placing her bet (she bet a little more than just once ;-) ):


And here is our betting ticket with the line up:




Here they are coming round the bend of the 5th race, 5 1/2 furlongs long. #7-Half Moon Lady came in first of this race, with #6 coming in second, #9-Tez Savitri in third, and my horse #2 coming in fourth.


Here is the gate getting setup for the 6th race, post 9:20 which was 1 mile 70 yards long:


That was the last race we watched before heading out. They had a total of 9 races. I was so surprised with how much time was in between each race, but I guess if you're betting and winning on every race you want that much time in between. On the way out we got to see the horses for the 7th race coming out and walking around the show area:


Then of course we couldn't help but get our picture in the 'jockey heads'. Those jockeys were so tiny, I didn't know they were so small.


**Disclaimer: I wasn't as pleased with my photos from tonight. I was hoping for better, but once the sun started to go down it was really tricky getting the horses at a fast shutter speed with little light (or I guess I should say capturing the fast horses with a slow shutter since it was dark)... so I did the best I could for now. It's good practice! And it's hard without a tripod... but I don't really feel like carrying it where ever I go :-P