The De Soto Heritage Festival Grand Parade 2010

The De Soto Heritage Festival Grand Parade is ranked as one of the largest and most prestigious parades in the South of the US, the dazzling and exciting Parade is truly a sight to behold for all ages. Over 150 illuminated parade entries light up the night with color, music and fanfare!

The estimated that well over 200,000 people participated or viewed the parade this year. The main street in Bradenton, Manatee Avenue, is closed down around 5:30 PM. First there is a 5K run, which is open for both children and adults. And then around 6:30 PM the parade itself kicks off.

The street is now closed for regular traffic

We are lucky enough to have friends with businesses at the perfect spot along the parade route, they are a dentist and a barber shop and share one large building. Every year they host a huge BBQ party for friends and family. Everyone brings something yummy to eat, and the hosts provide BBQ pig (sooo good, by the way).

Here we have just started to set up the tables where all the food was served, buffet style

We had our chairs placed just at the edge of the street and enjoyed some food and cold drinks before the real fun started.

Sarah and I ready for the parade to start

The street vendors were doing brisk business in the heat, but many brought their own coolers

There were floats of all types and sizes, some local politicians, firemen, police, schools and even our local 2010 Olympic figue skaters, Caydee Denney &, Jeremy Barrett and Amanda Evora & Mark Ladwig (they were the Grand Marshall).

One of many fire trucks in the parade, with the sirens blaring loudly!



There were lots and lots of pirates



Bradenton's mayor road in an antique fire truck...

And Manatee County's sheriff road with the armed forces



Here is one of our county's four high school marching bands

There was an Elvis impersonator on this float

Here we had a sunken treasure theme (and a look at some of the many, many beads that were thrown from all the floats)



The more you screamed, danced and waved your hands, the more likely you were that they would trow you some beads, so Sarah came up with her own attention getting dance moves...

And just look at all the beads Sarah caught!!!

It was almost 11 PM before Sarah got into bed, very happy after a fun day...