Tillamook June Dairy Parade.

My #1 blog reader informed me yesterday that it has been about 11 days since I last posted anything.  My humble apologies!!  In my defense, I do have a very good excuse.  Sunday is usually when I write and schedule several posts to randomly happen during the week. Well, last Sunday, it just so happened that I was enjoying the presence of great company, and blogging was not a top priority.  My dad and Janet got to spend about a week and a half with us and we had lots of fun and went on many adventures. 
Soon I will tell you about the great fun we had, but first I must tell you about the Tillamook Dairy Parade.   The parade was yesterday and we headed to the town of Tillamook to find the perfect spot to watch.  According to the 2010 Census, the population for the city of Tillamook was 4,935.  So we are thinking small town= small parade and it would probably be made up of all the fire trucks and police cars in the whole county complete with lights blazin and sirens screamin.  Boy were we wrong!  Almost 2 hours later we were headed back to the car.    We also learned that the Tillamook June Dairy Parade just happens to be the second largest in the whole state.  I will add that we had perfect weather and enjoyed some good family fun.  I took several pictures, but since there were over 109 entries in this grand parade I did not photograph them all.

We laughingly joked on our way to town that since it was the "Dairy" parade  maybe they would hand out cheese and yogurt etc.

Much to our surprise, the good folks from the Cheese Factory were there handing out individually wrapped slices of cheese.

I am pretty sure it doesn't get any better than cheese from the Tillamook Cheese Factory!

 

This is also the first parade I have attended where some of the floats have been semi trucks. Yes, you read that right Semi Trucks.  I would have been a nervous wreck if we would have been sitting on the other side of the street.   

 

Next came a really great sounding marching band.  Complete with baton twirlers and pom-pom wavers.  Yes I realize that this is pretty normal for any parade, but what really made me chuckle was that fact that this was not your typical high school marching band.  In fact these people were, uh, kind of, um, getting older.

They had a fun sound, and seemed to be really enjoying what they were doing!

 



 

Then these walkers and float... and just thinking of walking a couple miles in this lady's shoes made my feet blister. 

 

And then old cars, cause every parade has to have some old cars.  Behind the cars you can also see the Celebrate Recovery banner from the Tillamook Nazarene Church. 

 

And Kenzie and her little friend just keep waving and clapping and collecting candy.

 

 Then came the fire trucks and Smokey the Bear.  I'm not sure why they appear to be walking through smoke.

Next is a giant log truck....WHAT?  Well, we are living in logging country!

 

 Again I was nervous for these big trucks to manage the corner, but they handled them just fine!

No parade is complete without a few good horses, and some dressed up riders and for sure they must be waving flags!

 



 Another new one for me was this float by AAngels Traffic Control.  

I'm not even sure what to call this.  Around here, when the trucks aren't hauling a load, the back half of the trailer is stacked on the front half.  So of course it stands to reason that it should be in the parade as well.  I mean, if the road workers, flaggers and pilot car operators get to have a float then by all means this guy gets to join in the fun.

 And another Log Truck...   *I was sad when these two girls decided that it was ok to stand in front of my chair.

 

Check out the size of those logs!  And the people calmly sitting on the other curb.

This little guy really had a good time.

 

And another semi-truck, and another great band.  But riding in style sure beats marching any day.

 

 

Last, my very favorite thing.  Cowboys and their dancing horses.  O it was so very cool!!
This is called Dressage and is known as the "highest expression of horse training".

 

 

Fun times, longest parade ever, beautiful sunshine and blue skies.   That's it folks, the famous, second largest in the state Tillamook June Dairy Parade.