The Parade

Our tour leaders were pleased that our group was loaded on the bus on time - VERY early in the morning. We drove off from the camping area just after 5am. The ride to Pasedena is normally about 45 minutes but traffic was getting heavier every mile. We got to Pasedena and had to stop with the bumper to bumper cars. We could look back at the freeway and see cars lining up for the offramp that we just took. All the stoplights were blinking red and traffic controllers were at each section, but it was still very dark and they just had these little red lights in their hands that were barely visible. I'm surprised they didn't get run over, as more than one vehicle just ignored them.

Our bus was able to get parked just before 7am and we were advised to use the on-board facilities before leaving. Good idea! The portable cubicles provided along the parade route already had long lineups as we walked to the grandstand. Many people had been camped out at the roadside for more than 24 hours. In fact, driving back after our tour the afternoon before, we had seen lawnchairs 4 deep in the better spots, and there were RVs and vans parked down each of the side streets that had been there a night or two.

We found our grandstand seats despite the incredible crush of people. It was curb to curb humanity. We had great seats placed on an overpass, so no buildings were around us to block the view. Also, we were facing west, so the rising sun was at our back, not in our eyes.

I took a peek over the top of the grandstand, and saw that the highway below us had been blocked off and was used as the unloading area for the parade horses. The logistics required to run this parade every year is just mindboggling.



The parade started right at 8am. The way they cleared the street of people was ingenious. They had a police motorcycle team doing drive pasts in fancy formations and doing drills like weaving back and forth across the road. It was sit down or be run down! As the pedestrians cleared off, the drills got faster until everyone was in their seat, and then the motorcycles moved on to the next section of road. Then they had a stealth bomber roar over the 5 miles of parade route.

We had seen the decorating a couple of days before the parade, and at that time we had some doubt that all that work could be finished in time, but the floats were beautiful when they came down that street.

One float had skateboarders that skated right off the float and onto the road. Another was very long and was filled with water that supposedly could create a wave that they could surf on, but that didn't happen in front of us. We did have a float have mechanical problems nearby. They gave it 3 minutes to be able to start up again, and when it couldn't, they just pushed it off to the side to keep the parade moving.



At 10:30 we were back to being in a moving crowd heading back to the buses and cars. Our driver was very tolerant of all the people walking on the roads in front of us as he was trying to make his way to the freeway. But as one guy stepped off the curb ahead of us, he called out, "Buddy, I'm 40,000 pounds ... it's gonna hurt!"

We were given a farewell lunch back at homebase. Some folks went back on the bus to see the floats close up in a display area, but hubby and I'd had enough of the crowds. We did something with a little more elbow room - we went shopping.

The next day we packed up and got back on the road. We didn't go far, just back to the Prado Park we were in earlier. It's a lovely park that is open, with walking and biking trails, and it is close enough to Los Angeles that we can visit with friends that live here and do other things in the city. We would like to see the La Brea Tar Pits, and we have tickets to the Cirque du Soleil at the Kodak theatre. The weather has been a dream come true, sunny and very warm every day so far. We've even taken out the shorts! Finally, we get summer.

W