Adam seems to think we were up at the crack of dawn, but unless his dawn cracks later than mine, it wasn’t bad. We were at my sister’s in Littleton by about 8, and left there soonafter. We did get stuck in some traffic on the back roads, and when we were about 6 cars away, they closed off the road we wanted to take to get us a bit closer to the action. This just meant we had a slightly longer walk than we wanted, but it was incredible out yesterday so the walk was amazingly pleasant. I’d say if you’re going to try to be right next to the bridge, you’ll have to get their early, but we opted for the other side of the river looking down (next to the Visitor’s Center) and even getting there at 8:45 there was more than enough room to see everything. Plus, we were so close to the parade that at one point we had to duck to avoid being hit in the head by one of those poles that they use to hold the banners that identify the group marching.
One of the more amusing things we witnessed happened when a group marching from the Fenn School (in Concord) ended up stopping in front of us while everyone waited for some ceremony down on the Bridge to finish – 95% of them spent the whole time staring at and talking about the kids marching from a high school in Naples Florida. Specifically, their cheerleaders, pom pon girls and color squad, all of whom were dressed in the traditional short skirt “uniform”. It was pretty amusing to watch them watching the girls.
For the record, we thought it was pretty cool that the Naples high school marched in the parade, even though they were the only marching band that wasn’t somehow tied to Patriot’s day (either by being local to Concord and Lexington, or by dressing the part. Apparently they just wanted to come up to experience history firsthand, as it were, and to actually walk across the North Bridge. So they did. How much do we take it for granted that these amazing historic places are right in our backyard?
