Palominas Unorganized Parade

 Today was our third warmer-than-average morning, with 56F at 7am and overcast skies.  A tropical low is across Arizona for the weekend.  I made no hiking plans.

I did, however, intend to watch the Palominas parade at 10am. Palominas is a dispersed ranching and farming community that straddles the international border. I had never watched the annual parade and I wanted an excuse this year.  I packed up Gretchen and Wolfie and drove ten miles to Palominas and parked in the trailhead parking lot for the town's multi-use trail by the water retention area.

Skies north of me were dark.  I even saw lightning.  Clouds over the mountains were foggy.  This is the kind of winter weather I like, because the cool air keeps the dogs from overheating.

The multi-use trail is a 2.25-mile loop through desert grass.  It's not much of a trail, but one can see mountains in all directions.  State Road 92 traffic is always within earshot.  The trail appears to be popular with equestrians, as there were several piles of horse scat along the 10' wide trail.

Locals were already gathering along Palominas road with their folding yard chairs, getting ready to watch the half-mile parade.  Two older women across from me told me they enjoy this parade every year.  "You never know what you're going to see.  Last year a cow walked in the parade."  Not too far from me was a brown-and-white 2yo female border collie, Hazel, wearing a holiday wreath.

Well, there were no cows this year.  But after the proverbial bag pipes and school band, I did see several wreath and bell-wearing goats and a few dogs.  I walked against the direction of the parade recording the people (only to discover later that my recorder stopped at just past a minute). I kept both dogs in the truck to prevent any altercation.

The best part of the parade was watching the younger kids run after the candy that parade participants were tossing to the audience.  No wonder this is a popular parade!  Some even handed me small bags of goodies.

Cochise County Sheriff deputies helped close off traffic on SR92 for the half-hour parade.  Members of the Corvette club also participated, but Susan was not one of them.

Participants and parade walkers quickly departed at 10:30am and I drove home as well.  It was then that a gentle drizzle began to fall for the next hour, but we never got the heavy rain that was forecasted; it all moved further north than originally forecasted.

I shopped at Walmart for a new laptop cable and mouse traps as I noticed a family of mice around my little potted garden.  I saw Willie in my neighbor's yard to the west.  I stopped to call his name.  He did look up at me, but he didn't give me the usual mew of acknowledgment.  

I sure could use Willie's help getting rid of my new mouse family.

I topped off the evening with a nice walk around SteveA's neighborhood with him and Gretchen and Wolfie (Sweetie napped in the truck), which is known to go all out during the Christmas season with yard lights.