Last Day at The Rose Parade Rally

What a loooooog day.  We started by catching the bus at 6:00am this morning. Practically followed the crowds to about two blocks off Colorado Blvd where about 50 buses were being parked in one parking lot of a business.  Walked with the masses to our seating on a bleacher down the Blvd from all the news/TV carriers. Sitting four rows from the street is really great but I found myself missing the TV commentary and was really looking forward to seeing how the Property Brothers did announcing.  Darn...! Did not realize that California got so cold. Always think warm..  !!  LOL Doesn't it look like we are at home, not Pasadena??

The bands and floats were terrific.  We had worked on the Sierra Madre and it came together beautifully.

The crowds looking for their seats.  I saw that the bleacher seats we were in went for $94.00 per seat, however, a coach from back east was sitting near us and he said that he got his on Stubhub for $52 a couple days ago.  They were excellent seats.  We still had a few empty around us.

Always present

Was amazing to see this stealth fly over, was soooooo quiet !!

 Lots of Duck fans in the crowds!

 The Motorcycle cops did some amazing riding in formations

Here we go ! ! !

I can see Alyssa performing here.  Was so neat to watch these talented kids.  A little scary since the spotter was not watching and one guy almost went over the edge of the trampoline right onto the street.  He caught himself just in time.

 This is the Sierra Madre float..  We put a lot of roses into stem vases for use on the base.  It was really well put together.  When you look close at some of the other floats, there is space between the flowers, not on this float !

Here we go DUCKS ! 

 The hair on this horse looked real.  Was amazing.  I think that they used  coconut husk.

The City of Torrence honored the Grand Marshall Louis Zamparini who died earlier this year.. Turns out that our neighbor Jack Dean went to the same high school and Louis' brother was his track coach.  

 This eagle was incredible.  Pampous grass and leaves..  someone is soooo creative.

 This parade brought back lots of childhood memories of the Mother Goose Parade in El Cajon, California ! !

In the afternoon we boarded the buses after lunch and headed to the post parade float display.  Oh my, if we thought the street we crowded for the parade seats, they were worse in the post parade area.  AND, they charge to see the floats up close.  Ken was not walking too great since we have walked so much this week so we just went down the hill and saw the first five floats up close.  It was a two mile stretch of floats and that doesn't count walking from the bus.

This is The Bachelor's float.  Trista & Ryan, Chris Harrison and the new guy Chris the farmer from Iowa as well as others were on this float.

Heading to Thousand Trails in Palm Springs tomorrow.  It is actually in Palm Desert. We get to stay put for a whole month.  Gonna love that.  Sure hope it is warm there now ! ! !   LOL

Santa Anita Race Track

Not even sure I should blog today.  This Rally is so different than anything else we have done with Fantasy RV Tours and they assure us that they will never do this again.  The actually put this on with the SOI Motorhome Club, a chapter of the FMCA. It has been so disorganized and so not up to the quality standard of Fantasy RV.  Very disappointing on so many levels.  

Today was a quick shuttle ride across the parking lot to the restaurant of the Santa Anita Race Track for a "leisurely" lunch.  From arriving to the serving of dessert was three hours.  A bit slower than what we expected.  Beautiful, but cold day so was very nice to have an indoor seat.

Tonight is the New Year's Eve Party at the Rally Tent.  Should be fun.  Since we have to catch a 6:00am bus to the parade route, the party will end at 9:00pm east coast midnight.  Works well for us ! !   LOL

Happy New Year Everyone  ! ! ! 

Fantasy RV Rose Parade Rally

Today is our first full day at the Rally.  Fantasy does a great job.  We started the morning earlier than we have been getting up for a while, 6:30am and breakfast was at 7:30.  By 8:30 we were boarding the bus for the Sierra Madre Float Barn.  It is entitled "I think I can" this year. There were got to help get the roses ready for the float by cutting them to the correct size and sticking them in the water vases that had been filled by the Girl Scouts earlier.  

After cutting about 250 roses at our table in one hour, we went next door to tour the actual float building area. The workers were painting with seeds and other materials and the flowers will be applied to the green foam on the base of the float.  That will take place on the 31st.  In the meantime, all the flowers are stored in refrigerator trailers.

This is what the finished float will look like!

The floats princess's were ready for pictures ! ! 

In the afternoon we spent a couple of hours at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in downtown Pasadena.  It is a wonderful place that would really take at least a full day, if not a week, to see as it takes up about 209 acres of land. The brochure states that it is a private nonprofit collections-based research and educational institution founded in 1919 by Henry Huntington. They only charged $15 for admission of seniors. We were only able to see several of the gardens with a docent and then inside the Huntington House where the art collection is displayed.  I quickly found these two famous paintings. You may recognize them.

This is Pinky 

And this is Blue Boy

The most interesting garden for us was The Chinese Garden.  All the artwork and design came from Suzhou, China where my brother Joe and his wife Celeste lived for five years.  The actual inserts in the windows and the sandstone rocks as well as all the other materials were shipped from China.

It was so interesting to see all the flowers that are still in bloom, even in the winter...  Carmelia's, roses and this bird of paradise ! ! ! Beautiful

Tonight we are doing a winery tour and dinner at the San Antonio Winery. Should be fun! ! .

Tomorrow is another busy day !