3 Jan 2012 - Showcase of Floats and Long Beach

Sharon, Rosalind, and I took the shuttle from San Gabriel to Pasadena to see the Showcase of Floats, and arrived around 9 AM, which worked well. It was a hot day, though! The highs were supposed to be in the 80s, and it felt like the 80s in mid-morning, walking around on the concrete to view the floats. I'm glad I got to see them all up close. Unfortunately, some of the flowers had deteriorated pretty badly, due to two factors: the temps we've had - in the 80s - since Saturday morning, when the floats were finished, and the fact that the Rose Parade was on Monday this year, instead of Sunday, which meant the floats had sat around an extra day before the parade. I looked at every one of the floats, but spent an especially long time with my two favorites; the thousands of beautiful details on the China Airlines float and the Indonesia float were really impressive. The float that was a tribute to Roy Rogers actually had Trigger on it - stuffed! - and his dog too!! No kidding. A couple of the float actually had action going on. The float that included a surfing tank, had dogs surfing in the tank. That was a hit with the crowd. And one of the floats had a couple of skateboarders showing their stuff on the back of the float. I loved seeing the many creative ways organic materials were used to create the different colors and textures that the designers wanted in the floats, including kidney beans, bananas, cranberries, pineapples, silverleaf (to look like metal), and many other different kinds of seeds, leaves, berries, and beans. And, of course, lots and lots of beautiful flowers.

After I left Rosalind's house, I wandered down to Long Beach, where I spent an afternoon at the off-leash dog beach, which Joey loved. She ran around and around in the sand,and obviously enjoyed her first experience of the ocean. She chased the waves, but never let any of them catch her. She found a couple friends to play tag with. It was fun watching her have the time of her life. Someone I met on a walk recently mentioned that poodles are very athletic dogs, and I've thought of that many times as I watch her run and jump and dance on her hind legs. It's why they so often use poodles in circus acts.

Tuesday night I stayed at a nice campground in Long Beach. It turned out to be right next to Golden Shore marine preserve, so our walk the next morning along the water, was a real treat.