Blue Creek Creations and Photography: Freedom Festival Parade 2012

I hadn't posted this earlier because its a bit negative in tone, but decided I really didn't want to sugar coat my experiences of the day, so I have left it as it was....

Fourth of July.... early a.m.

The DJ down the street was asking people to dance the Funky Chicken in the street, and would toss shout-outs to the group of marathon runners as they streamed past. We were stationed at the head of the parade route, watching a street juggler performing off to one side of us, but the kid was so nervous that he kept dropping things and having to run after them. Kids were running in the street, tossing a football back and forth to help keep boredom at bay.

After the balloons had soared away we had made our way to the parade route to secure a spot... a spot that, at first, had us at the front of the line. As the pre-parade started, I began snapping pictures of the various characters as they went by. After a few minutes of this, a late-coming family decided to set up their blankets behind us and then demanded that we sit down as we were blocking their view. Pretty rude, I thought, as we complied, sitting down on the bare pavement. After all, we'd been there for over an hour already and I made sure to set ourselves up in an area where no one else was sitting. Well that lasted about fifteen minutes and then I had to stand up and move behind the family (who happily took our spots) as my back began hurting. Bare pavement for your seat and a bad back certainly do not go together, besides, I was tired of the mother's bad attitude and on-going muttered comments that the front line should be saved for little children, not full-grown adults.

We stood there through all of the pre-parade, and for part of the official parade before another family showed up with big chairs, shoving us further back, as they were joining a group who had already parked themselves off to our left. I admit that I hadn't had much sleep the night before so I was getting pretty irritated by this time. These late arrivals settled in with no regard as to leaving space for anyone else. The teenagers that had saved their spot were even more annoying as they were loud and obnoxious, yelling comments at anything and everything that passed, be it part of the parade or someone walking along the route, looking for a place to sit; several of those comments were a bit crude and definitely not very kind.

We stuck it out for another fifteen minutes or so before we decided we'd watched enough (sadly, the pre-parade was far more interesting than the parade actual)..... but I admit we also left partially because my back was really not happy, and where we were crammed to by that point left us with no wiggle room for me to move around, but mainly because I couldn't stand another minute of the rudeness around me without snapping at someone (as I said, I really had no sleep the night before, so by this point I was very tired and cranky). I do, however, believe that people should be polite and respectful to one another, and we certainly weren't seeing that on this day.

So I packed up my camera and we wove our way around people, blankets, coolers and the like, crossed between parade floats and walked back to the car.

I did wind up with a few good shots from the parade though...

The "Sons of Helaman" Road Warriors.... I got a big kick out of their patch....


If the Beloved got his way he'd paint his car like this...

Everyone loves the Chic-Fil-A cow!

"Defying Gravity".... these boys were on a big trampoline being pulled down the street and were bouncing so high that they were able to touch the street lights