Post Rose Parade Floats: Downton Abbey to Disney to Dragons

January 2, 2016 by RMW 17 Comments

First of all I want to apologize for being so behind with my postings and for not being able to address your comments and visit your blogs. I have projects I have to work on but I will catch up soon, I promise!

Okay…. Yesterday I watched the Rose Parade twice. It was the last time Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks were hosting the parade for KTLA TV in Los Angeles. Sad to see them go, but as they said, it was their choice to go out on top.

I’ve seen the parade in person twice many years ago. It’s a lovely thing to do with the bands and horses but the floats go by yards away and you can’t see all the details.

Three years ago I viewed the Post Parade floats and enjoyed seeing them up close and personal. Click here to see that post.

So this year I organized a trip for some friends. We were a group of ten. I was really happy that so many people wanted to go.

I took about a billion photos. The images I chose to post here were totally arbitrary and admittedly way too many. So forgive me.

You have to remember as you look at these photos that everything has to be from the plant kingdom. Flowers, seeds, leaves, beans, grasses, bark, fruit, vegetables… you name it.

No, you can’t use feathers so these wings are made of some kind of vegetation.

I don’t know how many gazillions of people show up to view the floats. They say it amounts to tens of thousands. This shot was taken on the way out and you can see a bazillion people still coming in way way way way up on the hill.

It was a good thing we arrived about ten in the morning before the serious crowds arrived.

There are two and a half miles of floats. And it takes over two hours to look at everything.

Fortunately it’s really well organized.

The weather was spectacular. Look how clear the mountains are. One of my friends commented he expected to see a dusting of snow. But there was none. However, next week we are expecting rain in the city which should mean snow on the mountains.

I pretty much took off on my own and lost sight of the group. It’s easier for me to take photos that way.

I think people are used to that by now!

It’s hard to expect people to go at my speed when I keep stopping to take photos. Oh wait, I have to take a picture of that!

I believe photographers see things other people don’t. And find significance in insignificant things.

On some of the floats I couldn’t help taking several pictures at different angles. Other floats I skipped completely. Not because i didn’t find them worthy but sometimes the crowds of people blocked my view and other times I just got tired. Nothing personal!

Also in some situations that pesky sun was just in the wrong place. Of course, later in the morning when the sun was overhead it became almost impossible to take a shot.

But I feel like the photos I was able to take are representative of the floats.

I am just plain impressed with this art form where anything seems to be possible.

As I wanted to get these photos posted as soon as possible, I didn’t have time to do a lot of post processing so many are as they came out of the camera and many have very little basic processing.

I have to say what really annoyed me was the photographers trying to take “artsy” photos. They were adjusting the aperture or shutter speed or angle or whatever, hogging their particular space so nobody else could take a photo. Get over it! If you want to be an artist then arrive really early in the morning to take your award-winning shots!

I was being courteous by taking my snapshot and moving on. This is not the place for Ansel Adams!

I think I got some pretty good photos that give people the general idea.

Enough of that!

In the US we are coming up on the final season of Downton Abbey in 2016. So it was really nice to see a representation of Highclere Castle where it is filmed. It was certainly a popular float:

As usual most of us arrived by public transportation. I walked 25 minutes to the Culver City station, took the Expo Line to the Red Line to the Gold Line. There was a free Metro bus shuttle from the Sierra Madre Villa station to the float viewing. The whole trip took a little over two hours.

I love public transportation and especially riding on the train.

After the float viewing we took the shuttle back to the train station.

From there we had a six-minute walk to the original Panda Inn for lunch.

I don’t know how wide-spread Panda Express is, but this is original sit down restaurant that also owns the Express venues. I always wanted to eat at this restaurant so I can check that off my bucket list now. They served a lot of food… but that was no problem for me. I ordered the garlic shrimp and ate every morsel.

Of course, I neglected to take photos.

Anyway, here are the rest of the way too many photos for your enjoyment. Click on any image to start the slideshow:

Hopefully next week, after I am done successfully with some events, I will be back on track with my blogging duties and responsibilities! Thanks for hanging in there!

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