Cleveland Reunion: Day 3

The third day of the family reunion was also July 4th, which meant that there were a lot of festivities in the town of Manzanita to attend.  After watching the first half of the Germany-France game we (those of us who were awake) headed to the Fireman's pancake breakfast.  It was a pretty hopping place, lots of people there and the business was brisk.  Eat your food and move out so more people can take your seat.

Here is my uncle Harvey as we are standing in line.  It isn't a very flattering picture... but it does show off the fire truck.

Every person got two pancakes and a decent slice of grilled ham, so it was pretty filling, I definitely could have eaten more, but I managed to survive.  We sat next to a family that had been in Manzanita for the fourth for many years so we asked him for advice about what to do for fireworks.  He strongly recommended going to the beach.  We weren't sure exactly what we wanted to do, we thought we might be able to view them from the house, which would mean much less walking.

After breakfast we headed down to the beach and walked around for a bit.  On the way to the beach, it was pretty evident that the entire town was super prepared for the parade.  Every available spot on the sidewalk was taken with a chair, and in some cases people were sitting there 2 hours before the parade was even supposed to start!

We walked home and had lunch and made it to the parade 7 minutes before it started.  We got a spot right next to where the parade started, and it seemed like a great spot to me.  The kids sat in the front, which offered a good view, and as we would discover, easy access to candy being thrown by the parade participants.

There were a lot of "floats", and the parade probably lasted an hour.  Here are a few of them

This was a beaver bus, it also shows all the kids running around for candy.  Riley is in the white shirt in the middle.

There were also some Chinese dragons.

 And some inventive jellyfish.

 There was a guy dressed up as a fox who handed out candy individually instead of throwing it.

 He then proceeded to dance to "What does the Fox Say?"

 There was also, very randomly, someone dressed up as a scout trooper from Star Wars.

Here is the haul of candy that was collected at the parade.

After the parade, a bunch of us went to Nehalem Bay Winery for a wine tasting and Live music and BBQ event.  It was a really chill place, the band was pretty good and the BBQ was excellent.  I thought the wine was decent, though I've never had a great ability to distinguish wine tastes.

After getting back and relaxing and eating dinner, most of the family played volleyball which was really fun, below are a few pictures, before everyone, including myself had joined.

Finally we headed down to the beach for fireworks, the entire atmosphere was really awesome.  The beach was packed with people and there were several who were launching their own mortar fireworks, which was almost like an additional show.  The main show lasted a really long time, but was really good.  There were several times I thought for sure it was over, but it just kept going and going.

The picture below doesn't do an adequate job capturing the beach and the atmosphere, but I suppose it will have to do.

All in all it was a terrific day, it was also very exhausting, but it was really fun.