I went to the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade!
| After having watched the Rose
Parade on TV all of our lives, my friend and I attended the parade
in person in 2012. We liked it so much that, on January 1st, 2013,
we
went back! Having learned from our experience in 2012, we arrived at about 8:35 AM at the south side of the intersection of South Los Robles Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. We chose the south side of the boulevard for parade viewing because, once the sun rose over the buildings, it would have been in our eyes if we had stood on the north side. When we arrived, the curbs of Colorado Boulevard were already filled with people, but it wasn't hard to find standing room behind them. |
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| Just before 9AM, police officers riding motorcycles decorated with Rose Parade flags and flowers drove back and forth a few times with lights and sirens to clear the parade route. And then, the parade arrived. |
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| The theme of the 124th Rose Parade was "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" As in previous years, there were a number of remarkable floats. My favorite was The Nurses' Float, "A Healing Place," featuring realistic looking, supersized wild animals. |
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| After the final float, there was a parade
of tow trucks. As the trucks passed, we walked down the center of a car-free Colorado Boulevard,
something that you can't do on an ordinary day, checking out
the scene of devastation that inevitably follows a big event. Within minutes, clean up crews descended, followed by
street sweeper trucks. Impressively, within about thirty
minutes, aside from the boarded-up, fenced-off windows of
the Colorado Boulevard businesses and the empty grandstands,
the boulevard appeared to be almost back to normal. |
I did this in 2013 in Pasadena, California, USA. |
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jen is also known as J.W. Lynne, a best selling author of eleven novels. Click on any of the titles below to see the book on Amazon! THE UNKNOWN: Eight kids learn the shocking reason why they were kidnapped. ABOVE THE SKY: A girl lives in a world where touching her soulmate is forbidden. THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE: A teen is locked in a bunker to take a simulated trip to the moon. KID DOCS: An experimental program turns kids into doctors. WILD ANIMAL SCHOOL: A girl falls in love with a boy at an exotic animal ranch. WHAT HE DIDN'T TELL ME: A traumatized girl meets a boy with a horrible secret. IF I TELL: A teen wonders if her father is a serial killer. Besides reading books and dreaming up stories to write, Jen's favorite activities are singing along to musical theater soundtracks and hiking in California's beautiful parks. **Jen's books are available on Kindle Unlimited.** |