Fourth of July 2017

We had a busy day planned for the Fourth of July. Beginning with the Parade which was scheduled to begin at 10 AM, and ending with a party and the fireworks display scheduled for 10 PM last night.

It had been three years since we were able to go to the parade on the Fourth of July in Jackson. Much had not changed during that time, but some things did change. We took lots of photos during the day and you can see that we had a terrific time.

Starting with the parade photos, we have this scene at the time of our arrival at around 9:30 AM:

We opted to sit in the stands this year. You can see them on the other side of the street on the right in the photo. That was a great location to watch the parade as it was near the end of the procession and it also was the area where the judges stand was located.

It was fun watching the pre-parade festivities. There was a lot of entertainment from the crowd, including this photo of a darling little girl strutting her stuff:

and this plane that flew over the parade site:

We also caught this couple waiting for the parade to begin:

The parade started on time as the color guard came through and we sang the National Anthem:

 

As mentioned, there were some changes from the last time we attended the parade three years ago. The crowd control was very lax, and you can see from the photos below that the crowd kept getting closer and closer to the floats in the parade to the point where people were on top of the floats:

It was still a wonderful time and the weather was perfect.

We had some free time before getting together with our friends for a Barbecue prior to the fireworks. It was a great time and there was plenty of food for everybody. This is a shot of all of us sitting around and having conversation during the evening:

The fireworks started about 20 minutes late. We moved our chairs down to the spot where we could get a clear view of the fireworks and at 10:20, they started, and it was a very good show:

All in all, our Fourth of July was very special and we had a terrific time.

Our final day off this week is today, and we are planning some kind of hike. Josie's leg is feeling better today, so we will try to schedule something that isn't too strenuous, but still gets us out and about for the day...