Fourth of July

Now that it has been almost a week since the Fourth, I guess I'll go ahead and post about it. It was a fabulous day and the highlight was definitely the parade. So, there are these metal "horses" down at the shop that were made for a show a few years ago that Molly and I "ride" on occasion and named Hank and Wilbur. Last year we thought it would be a great idea to ride them in the Fourth of July parade, but for a variety of reasons we didn't make it happen. But this year we were determined, so we discussed how it would be possible to take them on the road. We were thinking about putting new wheels on them but nothing sounded secure or safe enough so finally Pauli came up with the idea of putting them on his motorcycle trailer and he would pull us behind his truck. So that's what we did and we were definitely the hit of the parade.

We set up a whole scenario where Molly was an Indian who had captured Biz (see next picture) and I was the Cowgirl who was going to save her.

We had Biz tied up in the back of the truck. We spent the whole parade whooping and hollering and yeehawing and Biz called for help, it was so much fun. Molly and I were pretty sore the next day, though, from riding those metal horses. But it was all totally worth it.

While we were waiting in the canyon for the parade to start, two planes flew right overhead, it was pretty awesome.

After the parade Molly and I met up with a couple of new acquaintances, one of whom bought us lunch and we headed to the mining competition, our favorite part of the Fourth.

Molly and I content in the sun at the mining competitions.

This is the "Mucking" portion of the competition. The machine is on a track and there's a bucket on the front and they have to fill the big bucket behind.

This is the double jack where two people have to hammer stakes into the rock for a certain length of time and at the end they measure how far they got. I took pictures of this one because it was the only female in the double jack competition and I thought it was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure she was hitting it harder than her husband.

After the mining competitions Molly and I spent the rest of the night hanging out with our friend Cory and some guys from Montana that he was guiding for the week (he's a fishing guide). We went to Kip's for dinner and headed to Tommy's afterward. Overall, it was a great day and night spent with fantastic people. I wish it could have lasted for at least another week. Instead, the next day I got to work from 8am to about 12:30 at night. Such is life. My birthday was great too, but I'll post about that tomorrow. Hurray!