St. Patrick's Day Parade Recap

Well, I have a bit of catch up to play since I was a very poor blogger while my sister was in town. Today's theme: the Salt Lake City St. Patrick's Day Parade. I love this parade for two basic reasons: 1. You don't have to arrive hours in advance to get a good seat:

Please note the massive crowd turn out. More people did show up a bit later and I think other parts of the parade route had a better turn out.

And 2. They throw out lots of candy during this parade.

Tess kept her collection in her pocket until we had so much that we had to start using the diaper bag.

I had the chance to use my Sis' fancy Nikon camera, too, so that was lots of fun (although the pics look a bit better blown up on my computer than they do on this post). Now, without further ado, the parade:

Of course we came prepared with our own pits of green:

And there was plenty of Irish jig dancing:

Check out the massive Irish Wolf Hounds. Not the kind of animal that I would want to meet in a dark alley (or anywhere really).

There were, of course, lots of Irish dancers:

And more dogs:

And some big trucks all dressed up:


But my favorite floats were the ones that brought the Irish people into the parade. Now, if you know much about Ireland you will know that there are lots of different classifications for different types of Irish. There is the traditional term: Irish. There are the Scots-Irish. If you are LDS in Northern Ireland your Irish classification won't actually include the word Irish but it is still very much an Irish classification: you would be either Protestant Mormon or Catholic Mormon. Well here are a few more classifications that you may not have heard of.

Polynesian Irish (You might not be able to tell in the photo but they are all Polynesian):

Mexican Irish (again you might not be able to see it--sorry):

There are even the Civil War Reenactors from the North Irish:

And from the South:

And the scary silly string artists Irish (which I didn't get a shot of but I think you can tell how scary they were):

We didn't stay for the entire parade so who knows what other Irish classifications I missed. I can't figure out exactly why it is that on St. Patrick's Day everyone thinks they are Irish. I mean on St. Nick's day we don't all feel the sudden urge to claim Greek heritage. All in all, it was a fabulous parade. Can't wait 'til next year. Maybe we'll see you there.