Bob's Camp, Trenton, Independence Day 2011

Bob's Camp, Trenton, Maine; Independence Day, 2011 (Beachcombing series No.38)

Fourth of July in Bar Harbor is about as close as I've ever gotten to living in a Norman Rockwell painting. The parade starts at 10am, wandering down Main Street, filled with my friends, my childrens' classmates, people I've worked with, and people I know from places like the post office or the pharmacy.

My husband is in a Dixieland band, and they have a float every year.

 Sometimes one of my kids ends up in the parade. They're always a little sulky about it because a lot of the paraders throw candy, and if they are in the parade, they can't catch candy! Granted, all this small-town fellowship is watched by, I don't know, maybe 6,000 strangers who are here on vacation doubling the size of the population, but its still very much our parade.

This year the kids did a little decoration of their own:

After the parade there's a huge seafood festival on the town Athletic Fields, but I've never gone. We usually have our own lobster festival over at Bob's camp on Union River Bay. You may remember Bob's camp, if you've been reading for a while. This year the weather was perfect,

the lupine were in full bloom,

and my father-in-law read the Declaration of Independence out loud to all of us.

When he finished, I tried to recite the Preamble to the Constitution, and got out a pretty mangled version of about two-thirds of it. Then one of the kids started singing the Schoolhouse Rock song - do you remember it? Those were awesome videos. I can't believe "kids today" still watch them. And they remember the Preamble! "We the people".... la la la. It's still stuck in my head and July is almost over.

In the evening the Town Band gives a concert in the bandstand on the Village Green, and then there are fireworks. After the fireworks there is a massive traffic jam that lasts til long after midnight, so people who've done this before hang out at the ice cream parlors or the bars, depending on their personal preference, and the locals go home and stuff their heads under their pillows trying to drown out the horns of people who think honking will help 5,000 people move their cars faster down the single road out of town. We usually put the younger kids to bed and open a bottle of wine with friends who live outside of town. When the jam clears up, we all tumble into bed, happy to be Americans.