Fourth of July and First Friday - Hood River, Oregon

The town of Hood River takes 4th of July seriously. At 10AM there is a parade through the Heights that the whole town shows up to and/or participates in. Anyone can be in it... just hop on a bike, unicycle, car, rice rocket, truck, monster truck, harley davidson, dirtbike... or don't ride anything and walk... play an instrument, whatever... it's all good in the Hood. We enjoyed the last half of the parade with my folks (Bethany and I thought it started at noon so we were a bit late) and then had a pretty relaxing day. We finished moving into our new place, more on that later...

Anyway, 4th of July also happened to be First Friday of the month, another big Hood River event. So downtown was shut off to traffic and packed full of people. Lots going on. We actually didn't get to see all that much because we ran into so many friends we hadn't seen since before our big trip so we caught up with people and stuff. It was super fun.

When it started getting dark we headed down to the river to find our spot for the fireworks. It was a great show! I'm always surprised at how good the Hood River Fireworks show is for being such a small town.

I brought the camera to take some snaps, here are a few!

This band was from Lafayette, LA and was super good. Everyone was dancing and groovin out in the Horse & Hound British Pub parking lot. We got brats with banana peppers and sauerkraut from the hot dog stand that were super yummy.

Fireworks seen from the inlet area on the Columbia River. Hills in the background are White Salmon and Underwood, Washington.

A couple more fireworks shots...