Bishop Mule Days is an annual festival celebrating the mule

Mule

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...

, held in Bishop, California

Bishop, California

Bishop is a city in Inyo County, California, United States. Though Bishop is the only city and the largest populated place in Inyo County, the county seat is Independence. Bishop is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley, at an elevation of 4147 feet . The population was 3,879 at the...

 over a six day period just before Memorial Day

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...

. It includes competitive events and the largest non-motorized parade

Parade

A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...

 in the United States. It started as a small show in 1969 with a few hundred attendees and has grown to Bishop's largest event, attracting as many as 30,000 spectators. Among mule shows, Bishop Mule Days has been described as "The Granddaddy of Them All".

Bob Tallman

Bob Tallman

Robert Mathew "Bob" Tallman is an American rodeo announcer from Weatherford, Texas, once called "the greatest announcer that ever lived. He's just got a God-given talent."-Early years:...

 has been the senior announcer of Bishop Mule Days for over 20 years.
Also included are an arts and crafts show, and a country and western musical concert. The featured musical performer in 2010 was Lonestar

Lonestar

Lonestar is an American country music group consisting of Richie McDonald , Michael Britt , Keech Rainwater , Dean Sams , and Michael Hill . McDonald left the band in November 2007 for a solo career before returning in 2011...

.

Parade

The annual Bishop Mule Days parade takes place on the Saturday morning before Memorial Day. The parade route runs north on U.S. Route 395

U.S. Route 395

U.S. Route 395 is a U.S. Route in the western United States. The southern terminus of the route is in the Mojave Desert at Interstate 15 near Hesperia. The northern terminus is at the Canadian border near Laurier, where the road becomes Highway 395 upon entering British Columbia. At one time, the...

 through downtown Bishop. No motorized vehicles or floats are allowed; all entries must either be on foot, or use mules or horses. The 2010 parade had 110 units, including 18 mule pack strings from commercial pack stations

Pack station

A pack station is the base of operations for transporting freight via pack animals in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The station facilitates the transition from mechanized transportation to pack animals, and necessarily includes a corral for the animals and sometimes a stock loading ramp...

 and government agencies including the United States Forest Service

United States Forest Service

The United States Forest Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass...

, the National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

 and the Mountain Warfare Training Center

Mountain Warfare Training Center

The Mountain Warfare Training Center is a United States Marine Corps installation located in Pickel Meadows on California State Route 108 in the Toiyabe National Forest, 21 miles northwest of Bridgeport, California...

 operated by the United States Marine Corps

United States Marine Corps

The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...

. Many historic mule drawn and horse drawn vehicles participate. Although most parade units are from California, units from Idaho, Nevada, Iowa, Arizona, Oregon and Utah participated in 2010.

Grand marshalls of the parade in past years have included Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 and Norman Livermore

Norman Livermore

Norman Banks "Ike" Livermore, Jr. was a California environmentalist, lumber industry executive and state official. He was the only member of California governor Ronald Reagan's cabinet to serve during the full eight years of his administration...

.

Competition

Competitive events take place over a six day period at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop. "A full slate of competitive events is featured, including events such as barrel racing, calf roping, steer stopping, cow penning, flat racing, and carriage driving. Activities also range from packing to dressage, and from team chariot racing to mule shoeing contests."
There were nearly 220 classes in 2010.

The packing scramble

The packing scramble is a competitive event unique to Bishop Mule Days. Mule pack strings enter the arena, and are unloaded and untethered. Rodeo cowboys then stampede the herd, firing blank gunshots. The event is described as a "wild and wooly spectacular" with "more than one hundred horses and mules running loose in the arena." "Teams of professional backcountry packers compete against each other for bragging rights. Each team must wrangle its own mules out of a herd in the arena, pack them correctly, and race around to the finish line as spectators whoop, cheer and jeer." The winning team is the one that is first to reassemble and reload its pack string, and lead it out of the arena.