Douglas County Fair Parade

This past week was the Douglas County Fair. The last county fair I went to was in Orange County, Abby's first year, I think. That fair lasts 2 or 3 weeks, is in full swing every day, and has a big-name (or close to it, anyway) musician every night.

Not so much here in Douglas County.

We went on Thursday and the carnival hadn't even started. There were no vendors. The fun food stuff (like, fried everything) was starting that night, but we were there in the afternoon so there was almost nothing to do. We got to tour the small animal exhibits and see the horticulture judging. (Well, we passed by it, anyway, on the way to look at all the stuff kids had entered in the....um...not sure what it is they enter stuff in. But, you know, quilts and cakes and tables they've built, that sort of thing. Really impressive, actually, some of the things these kids had done who were 8 or 10 or 14 years old. There was a quilt done by a 12 year old that could easily have gone for a hundred dollars, if not more. Simply beautiful.) The band on Saturday night--the Sha-Na-Na's. Fitting, since the theme of the fair was "Blast from the Past." But still not exactly super-exciting.

BUT--Saturday morning was the parade, and it was great! (And long--like, well over an hour.) It was Abby's first parade, and PJ's too, of course.

PJ was totally into it and waved to everyone.

The parade was 3/4 over before Abby started waving to folks. Up until then she spent most of her time freaking out that PJ was going to get lost--like, near tears every time I took my hands off her. Poor kid.

There were queens and princesses on horses--some of Abby's favorite things.

Local churches had floats, too--never seen that in a parade before! This church's band did a concert in the library's pavilion last month, too.

This is a local church plant that currently meets in a school and is going to build a community center instead of a traditional sanctuary and office building. That really impresses me. They handed out microwave popcorn packs instead of candy.

Of course there were marching bands--4 or 5 of them, including a middle school from Pueblo that was really good.
As Abby calls him, Old MacDonald!

Abby loved the woman's dress in the Civil war unit.

A whole mess of tractors, including this one from 1906.

No idea what this was for, but it was cute.

One of the local high schools has the saber-tooth tiger as its mascot. Abby was not fond of it.

Does anyon else think it weird that the US Census had a display? I love the quote on the front about it being safe.

I spent most of the parade trying to keep PJ from running out into the street. She wanted nothing more than to be in the thick of things.

We took about 15 pictures of Abby--this is the only one of her smiling. I don't know what it is about cameras that makes her so sullen.

The Morrow girls in their shady spot on the sidewalk. A great find, given the majority of the parade route was in the sun.

One of the few times we were all three looking at the same thing at the same time, instead of me running out after PJ or Abby hiding behind me or my mom because of the noise.

So overall--the fair was kind of a bust (well, if we'd gone over the weekend it probably would have been really cool, but it was definitely not what we were expecting), but the parade was awesome. Looking forward to next year when PJ can (hopefully) be trusted to stick with us and not go taking off after the floats.