Rose Parade 2023

Hello, for this latest entry of my non-sequential blog I’d like to show you pictures I took at the Rose Parade this year. It was great to be back for the first time since the pandemic…I think it was my first parade since 2017? Maybe.

The day begins with an early morning walk up to Leslie’s Pool Supply, the spot where we’ve been parking our chairs in collaboration with the McGregors and the Collettes for the last while. The pre-parade excitement along Colorado is one of the best parts of the whole day.

The Stealth Bomber had to take a break this year so instead we had two B-1 Lancers do a flyover…officially this marks the beginning of the parade, but down at our spot we know we’ve still got a good while so we took a little walk to PCC by way of our old parade watching spot at Colorado and Allen, snuck into the Church Institute building to use the bathroom, and moseyed on back to our spot at Leslie’s.

Back at Leslie’s the parade-anticipation begins. One of the McGregor grandchildren turned out to be an old high school friend of Liz’s. And we had other new friends in the bunch. Plus old friend! Soon the official Rose Parade police motorcycles rolled by and it was time to sit down and enjoy the parade!

And here we go! It’s the 134th Tournament of Roses Rose parade!

When the golden band arrived there was some kind of big breakdown somewhere and the parade was held up for quite a long time. So people start drifting out into the street. It proved an excellent opportunity for a picture with La Cañada raccoon float.

Ok! Back to business, everyone sit down and let’s go!

Illinois had a float! IYNYN (If you nose, you nose.)

And then, just like that, the parade was over! What a nice time we all had. Thank you for scrolling all the way to the bottom of this post!