Luckily we live close to Pasadena and our family loves the Rose Parade floats! Many of the floats are built in warehouses nearby so we often get a look at many of them before the parade. The ones with dogs, cats and horses are always our favorites. While last year was a great one for family pets, this year was slim pickings for our favorites, but still a colorful inspiring parade with lots of wild animals and fantasy animals and of course beautiful florals. Here’s a picture of one of the dogs being worked on before it’s put in the float. Looks like this is mostly made of grasses. All kinds of florals, blossoms, seeds, grasses and leaves are legit on floats. It’s fun to see the flowers in the boxes they’re shipped in – they arrive in from all over the world!
The only float that featured dogs this year was the 811 Dog Alert of So. Cal, “Digging Dogs.” There were several dogs on the float. The dog operating the backhoe was supposed to demonstrate that hitting and breaking a water pipe is one of the dangers of digging without calling 811 to determine what’s underground. Unfortunately this year was one of the coldest on record, 32 degrees at parade time, and the water that was supposed to spurt out of a broken pipe on the float didn’t spurt – because the water pipes underneath really did freeze and break!
Cliff Meidl was riding on the Digging Dogs float. Cliff’s truly “inspiring story” (the theme of this year’s parade) is that he was “severely electrocuted” and told he would never walk again. Instead, he not only persevered until he could walk, he went on to win 2 Olympic Gold Medals and be the United States’ flag bearer at the Olympics! Although there weren’t many dogs or any cats in the parade there were plenty of horses! There were more than a dozen equestrian groups and we loved them all but our favorites are always those gorgeous Clydesdales from A-B (Budweiser). If you want to take a look at all the wonderful floats, bands and equestrian groups in the parade go to: http://program.tournamentofrosesonline.com/y2015/43.html
Happy New Year!
Tags: 2015 Rose Parade, Floats