Parade of Lights 2008

Tonight, Jeff and I went to the annual Fort Worth Parade of Lights. This parade, a tradition for almost 30 years, is always held the day after Thanksgiving and culminates in the lighting of the big Christmas Tree downtown. We had planned to meet my friend Francie, who had flown in from Georgia for Thanksgiving, but I wasn't able to reach her via cellphone to let her know where we were in the huge crowd. Anyway, we stayed for the whole parade, and it was nice to be downtown. Once we found a parking space (we paid $10 for it) and walked a short distance to the parade route, we had a pretty good view of what was going on. One thing the parade did teach me is that I can seriously suck as a digital photographer. Very few of the photos actually turned out okay. My camera has face recognition technology, so I got a lot of clear images of the backs of people's heads and blurry pictures of floats. Night time shots aren't my specialty either, so obviously I have some practicing to do.

After the parade, Jeff and I headed uptown towards the Stockyards to El Rancho Grande for some seriously good Mexican food. It was just the ticket after all the turkey and dressing from yesterday. I may be reaching for the Tagamet now, but I enjoyed my beef enchiladas with chili con carne!

Anyway, here's what I was able to capture. I hope you enjoy them!

Jeff at the parade. I got him to smile for a nice picture for once. :)

This was a cool float from the school of Performing Arts, I think. Performing Arts was in the name somewhere -- that's all I remember.

The float from Wells Fargo. I think my credit card bill helped fund it.

I don't remember whose float this was, but the picture turned out halfway decently, so I kept it.

This float was from a series of classic cars all decked out in lights.

Finally, the big Christmas Tree was lit about 10 minutes ahead of schedule. This tree is in Sundance Square on Main Street and will remain there through Christmas. Drivers will need to find an alternate route.