You don't expect a rodeo to begin with a fervent prayer to the Almighty, but that's the way in Idaho. Before enjoying the thrills of bareback riding, you pray, take off your stetson for The Star Bangled Banner and sing along with It's Great To Be An American.
In Nampa in western Idaho, they have been holding the rodeo called the Snake River Stampede for 85 years, so traditions are important. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were among the singing cowboys who could fill the stadium 50 years ago, but now it is country-and-western over loudspeakers which accompanies the steer wrestling, the calf-roping and the bull-riding.
The cowboys have become professionals competing for $250,000 in prize-money and jetting from rodeo to rodeo. The star the night I was there was an Australian, Mr Scott Johnston, who now lives in Texas. He won the bareback bronc and the saddle bronc events and has already won $100,000 in prize money this year, although he is still recovering from a back injury
The spectators could also run an eye over the eight rodeo queens who were striving to be Miss Rodeo Idaho 2001. I was rooting for Ms Amanda Kumiko Kent, a 19-year-old University of Idaho student who told us: "I have painted houses and kissed a cow, all to serve a community. Opportunity is like the last hair on a bald man's head. You must grab it before it's gone for ever."
You can start early to be a rodeo performer in Idaho. One of the most popular events was the Mutton Bustin', open to children between five and seven. They have to stay on a sheep for eight seconds to be judged on performance, and it's not easy as the sheep give buck leps as they race across the stadium.
There is more to Idaho than rodeos, but unfortunately it is now in the news for the destructive fires roaring through its forests. It has stunning mountain and river scenery. Hell's Canyon where the Snake river has cut fearsome gorges is actually deeper than the Grand Canyon. Some of the raw force of the river has been tamed by a series of dams but not enough to spoil the fun for whitewater rafters.
The dams have become a hot political issue as the presidential candidate, Mr Al Gore, is being challenged to support the breaching of the dams to save the river's salmon stocks. But this demand by environmentalists is not popular with everyone as it would increase the price of electricity and affect barge traffic to the Pacific.
The Snake and its canyons were camping grounds for the Nez Perce Indian tribe which endured harsh treatment in the last century from gold-diggers who coveted their lands and from the US cavalry which backed them.
The 1855 Walla Walla agreement created a reservation which gave the Nez Perce exclusive rights to most of their hunting grounds, but the discovery of gold in 1860 led to demands from the prospectors, including many Irish, for a new reservation only one-tenth of the size of the first one.
The tribe divided into treaty-ites and anti-treaty-ites. The latter, led by the legendary Chief Joseph, tried to escape to safety in Canada but were surrounded 40 miles short of the border and forced back to the reservation.
Today the Nez Perce have self-government on their shrunken reservation but are far out-numbered by whites, who resent the separate taxation and policing system which the tribe enjoys.
The mayor of Kamiah, a town on the edge of the reservation, told me that casinos for which only the Indians have licences are causing bankruptcy among growing numbers of white gamblers. The mayor like many other whites is in favour of a single system of justice and for the abolition of tribal government.
Idaho also attracts well-armed militia groups because of its remote valleys where these extremists can train and propagate their message of intolerance. In Kamiah, a former Green Beret, Bo Gritz, established Almost Heaven, a community of "Christian Patriots".
The Aryan World Congress of white supremacists recently took place in the beautiful resort of Coeur d'Alene. Last year the event turned into an angry confrontation between Aryans and anti-racists, but this year it was a much quieter affair.
The Aryan Nations is headed by Mr Richard Butler (83), a former aerospace engineer who moved to Idaho from California to escape the Jews, blacks, Hispanics and other "alien scum" he believed were contaminating the country and threatening to overwhelm the white majority.
Mr Butler said at a press reception he was looking to the Internet to spread the Aryan message. "We will plant the seeds" for continuation of the white race, he said.
The same weekend, in the state capital of Boise, Gay Pride Week was celebrated, culminating in a march through the city to a local park where drag queens performed dance numbers on a stage. Idaho is one of the small number of states which still outlaw homosexual acts in private.
Like other conservative Rocky Mountain states it has been suspicious of gay rights. Participants in the first gay march in 1990 wore masks and feared being shot. But this year's peaceful march and festival showed that there is now more tolerance.