Cherry Blossom Festival Parade

Yup! Another parade! I just can't get enough of them. Even though it was a rather blustery day, there was a pretty huge turnout for this one. Luckily, I had gotten tickets for bleacher seats for Mom, Tín, Rich and me. Especially since Mom's knee was still somewhat weak. Standing in the cold would not have been fun. We'll get right to the pics.

Alex Trebek was the Grand Marshall and started off the parade.

One of the fun things about the Cherry Blossom Festival Parade are the balloons. It was so windy that they had to hold this one low to the ground. It ended up being the only one we saw because it got so windy that the rest of them couldn't be carried along the parade route. Too bad.

Here are all of the festival princesses. There's one from just about every state. The festival queen is chosen from among the state princesses. Hmmm... I don't see one from New Mexico.

That's because the princess from New Mexico was chosen to be the queen! Well, one of them anyway. There are two queens. One from the US and one from Japan. 

There were the usual - marching bands, a few production numbers (we weren't sitting in a good spot to get pictures of them, but they were pretty spectacular), sponsor floats,etc. This Shriner clown was hilarious.

Just about every parade has an old fire engine or two, but how would you like to have to put out a fire with this?

Even the Easter Bunny made an appearance!