4th of July Parade

Our original plan was to go into town early and start the day at the Town Center where there was a pancake breakfast with eggs and sausage being served from 8 AM until 10 AM. We slept in and decided to have our eggs and bacon at home and save the $9 per person charge for breakfast. We still went into town at around 9:30 to pick a spot to park and to find a place to watch the parade that started at 10:30. It was easy finding a parking space and we found a great spot to watch the parade. Although we didn't think to bring our small folding chairs, we sat along the curb until the parade started and then stood up behind the folks that had chairs. It worked out fine.

The crowd kept growing and we couldn't believe the number of people that came to watch. The street looked like this:

and our location was directly across from the town center and the antler arches:

There were even these crazy girls that watched the parade from the rooftop of a building along the street:

The parade started a little late - around 10:40 - and had everything that you would expect to see in a 4th of July parade in Jackson Hole, WY. There were the usual dogs:

and horses:

and cars, of course:

and covered wagons:

Then, there were the usual politicians in their luxury cars, the clowns and other groups - including the 4H, banks and everything else in town. The parade lasted for almost 45 minutes and was a perfect occasion to kick off the 4th.

We had a full house at the Lodge and sold out every available room for the first time last night. The fireworks were cancelled - to everybody's disappointment - as a result of the extremely dry conditions. The group that sets up the fireworks display and launches the fireworks were scheduled to stay at our lodge - 10 rooms - and, of course they cancelled those. We were able to sell all of those to walk-ins to sell out the place.

Today begins our weekend and we will do some fun stuff for sure. One thing we will do this morning, after breakfast, is to go to the fitness center and sign up for the 3 months that we have left in this area. Following that, we have planned a trip to the location where I had the heat exhaustion attack and we will complete the trip by viewing the falls at Inspiration point.

We hope everybody had a great 4th of July celebration yesterday and were able to see some fireworks that we missed this year...