"It's all about the people."

It seems that this vacation is turning out to be all about the people. Not that we aren't doing fun things and going fun places but it's the people that are making our vacation.
On Thursday morning (still wearing our travelling clothes because it seems our luggage needed some extra time to be tourists in Omaha) we went to the Rodeo Parade. Now, all the years that we lived in Tucson we never once went to the Rodeo Parade. It was a girls day out...none of the men in the household at our friend's house wanted to go. We drove to the Tucson Mall and took a shuttle down to the Rodeo grounds and then we walked along the road until we got to a spot where we could get a good view. Here are some of the things that we saw:


This parade is said to be the longest non-motorized parade in the nation. I don't know about you but I was expecting to see a lot more creativity and imagination dispayed but mostly it was people riding on horses, local marching bands, people riding on horses, stuff like what you see in my expertly taken pictures (I know, I know I've got such a keen eye), and more people riding on horses. I was told later that all the horses are a very big deal. Apparently one gets to see all kinds of different kinds of horses. I admit it, I saw all kinds of different horses. I was so impressed that I tool all kinds of pictures of them. I quess I'm just not about the horses. People weren't even dressed interestingly. A few were but not many.
So, we watched the parade for about 40 minutes and then the young girls got bored so we moved on to more excitng things like this:Now we thought that this was worth our attention.
Of course, there were a few "fry bread" booths to scope out. Ah, to be back in the land of real fry bread made by real Tucsonians. You can get plain (that means hot with grease) or with powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, and (my personal favorite) taco style with beans and stuff. Hey, the Native Americans have been around longer than my tribe and if it's good enough for them then it's good enough for me. This is a picture of all us girls:As were sitting there a group of young thugs in training walked by and threw something on our blanket. It just so happens that a few minutes before that someone had thrown something at Artie's pantleg while we were watching the sumo wrestling. This thing is a small glass vile filled with some sort of yellowish liquid and when the vile is broken there is a vile smell that comes wafting forth. It smells like rotten eggs. One of the kids told me that one of the vendors was selling them. How did I miss that? Anyway I was told later that "you should have seen the look on my face" as I turned to the young thugs in training and told them exactly what I thought of what they just did. I remember the word "rotten" being repeatedly used.
All in all it was a great good time. We packed up our stinky, rotten egg smelling blanket and took the bus back to the mall.
I wish the parade itself had been visually more fun but like I said, "It's all about the people."