Monday, July 7, 2008

Patriotic Duty

Bend celebreates the Fourth in slightly random ways. Random, yet entertaining. They kick off the Independence Day festivities with a Pet Parade. Kids of all ages dress up as their favorite pet, and attach leashes to their dogs, goats, rats, and snakes in order to march around downtown throwing out candy and waving at spectators, most of whom are four legged. We decked Kelty out in some sparkly stars and joined some friends in this years parade.

Juliet dressed up as a cat/ballerina.



Wrenna became a fairy/bunnyrabbit.




I'm Pretty sure this dog is related to Kelty.




Oliver Buzz Lightyear meets a very nice rat on parade.




This Girl and her Goat got the biggest applause of day.





After we made it through 3/4 of the parade route- sleepy kids, tired dogs- we went down to Drake Park for the Old Fashioned Festivities, which included lots of three legged races, watermellon eating contests, and some good live music. The temperature was perfect, the kids got to mellow out a bit, and I got in some quality people watching time.
At two pm we decided to head home to rest up before fireworks, but on the treck back to the car- we hit a bit of a delay. The annual Freedom Ride had commenced- which meant Hundreds of people on bikes (several costumed quite...ummm... patriotically with red white and blue body paint and not much else) had taken over the downtown streets, riding a loop and blocking traffic for a good half an hour. Almost every car waiting honked their horns happily and gave high fives to the bikers going by. My friend Marnie and I were sad we didn't have our bikes with us so we could have joined in.


This doesn't do justice to the scale of bikers clogging the streets.


And that was just Friday.



Tired little Lamb, waiting for Mary.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What no pic of body paint?
Is that you with red hair in the blue chair?
Far

kaycee said...

Nope, I walked in the parade with kelty- Al got one picture of us but I didn't post it. And my hair is blond at the moment.