July 4th Parade in Sandpoint!

It was a nice July 4th, not to hot! Mickey's husband owns a art gallery in town on the main route of the parade so we had great seats to watch! I was in Sandpoint last year for the parade and it was so hot I decided to watch from my hotel room; I had only been here about 2 weeks at that time. So this year it was exciting to see the parade up close! The children's parade was first and basically it is a parade of children dressed up in Red, White and Blue. I told Lindsay, one of my employees, that she would have to dress her son up next year and pull him in a wagon. After the children's parade we had about an hour until the main event. Mickey had set up a small breakfast of fruit and cheeses for us to eat before the parade. The parade started off with the local law enforcement and then on to the other floats and participants. Check out the photos below.

Local Bagpipe Club ~ they were really good!

Had to take a picture of the kids sitting next to us. They were so cute and excited about the parade.


This float had the kids building the flag as they drove through the parade



Smokey kept loosing his pants and sat down as I took this picture. The next one is a little better.


Just like Smokey apparently there is a mascot for the waterways. He is a chipmunk. I can't remember his name, sorry.

Zany Zebra, a store in town had a lawn mover brigade.

These pups were just too cute! They had about 12 of them.

A reminder of home. The Shriner's had the moonshiners come out and entertain us.

The police was caring off one of the moonshiners

The moonshiners official vehicle

Here are some kids after the parade playing in the water fountain in town.

After the parade I went home to get my new bike and ride into town to see Lindsay's new house and let her know we had been invited to Mickey's for a BBQ that evening. Sandpoint has some great fireworks but this year I thought it would be nice to relax and not be in the mass crowd. So off to Mickey's we went, she lives in a neighborhood of about 20 homes and they have lake access which includes a nice lawn with a small beach for all the residents to use. It was like having the lake right in your backyard. We had hamburgers and hotdogs, I made pasta salad which everyone seemed to like. Once it got dark Abigail wanted to start the fireworks they picked up earlier that day. It is illegal to have the up in the sky fireworks in town but you can get them on the Indian reservations. Across the lake from where we were was Georgia's house,who is our President and CMO, in the area where her house was they had some great up in the air fireworks as well as the house next to where we were on the lake. However, the best fireworks were the ones we set off ourselves. Abigail was so excited. It reminded me of when we used to gather as a family at my grandparents and the whole neighborhood would come over for a BBQ and fireworks. Thanks Mickey for a great day!