It takes a LOT to "float a float" -- My entry to Photo-Themes "I Love a Parade"

Every year in late April, the little Northern California town of Sebastopol puts on "The Appleblossom Parade"...

Sebastopol was once the center of the Gravenstein Apple orchard business and I remember being a kid (back before there were rocks) and touring through the area as the apple blossoms were all in bloom... It was an incredible sight...

Since that time, however, most of the former apple orchards are now vineyards given up to the production of grapes for the wine industry...

The Western Sonoma County Historical Society (of which I am a past-president) is like any other volunteer organization... In other words, approximately 10 people do all the work for the entire membership. I seem to have this difficulty in keeping my mouth shut when volunteers are requested for projects and that's how I came to be the Chair of the Appleblossom Parade Committee...

(NOTE: I want to apologize for the poor quality of most of these photos... I hadn't yet gotten my new Canon and took these with my old, cheap little "DigiPen" camera...)

Fortunately, I own a small flatbed trailer and a garden arch that I bought on close-out a couple of years back which at least got us THAT far in starting on a float for the parade. I figured that with some balloons and streamers, a few apple boxes for people to sit on and some potted plants for the decorations, we could pull it off. Here's a very low-resolution copy of my "working plan" for the float:

 

 (Okay... Stop snickering out there... I never claimed to be an artist, ya know...)

The theme was "Diamond Jubilee" celebrating the 60th year of the parade and I noticed while doing research that the number "6" kept coming up again and again... So, I made two of these signs, cut them out like old "scrolls" and attached them -- back-to-back -- on top of the cab of the truck:

I also designed and crafted the big "diamond" below out of old cardboard boxes and aluminum foil and then printed out the big diamond-shaped signs you see next to it -- each outlining a different year ending in "6" when something of local historical note happened. 

I took the trailer over to one of the member's houses and we had a "decoration party" the day before the parade:

We used these old turned posts that I salvaged from the site of the old Wright Nursery (see a chapter from my short book "Confessions of a Plant Activist" entitled "Actually, it's a vine..." on ALongStoryShort.net at http://www.alongstoryshort.net/ActuallyItsaVine.html for more info on the Wright Nursery):

That night, it misted so much that it was almost raining and I had to run to the hardware store and buy a couple of clear plastic painting tarps to put over the whole thing... The streamers were pretty limp the next morning, though, even still...

My Jeep doesn't have a trailer hitch so a friend was kind enough to lend me her pick-up to pull the float for the parade... I put one of these on each of the doors:

Here's the float receiving last-minute touches from a couple of historical society members on the morning of the parade:

And here we are on the morning of the parade just waiting in line for our turn to start:

It was a great experience and I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN! ...lol...