Days of 47 Parade Floats

For those of you that do not live in the state of Utah we have a state holiday called Pioneer Day. It's each July 24th and it celebrates our pioneer forefathers. In some parts of Utah this celebration is larger than the ones for the 4th of July.

Each year Salt Lake has a big Days of 47 parade for Pioneer Day. Since it's July, and therefore a million degrees outside, we have never attended the parade itself. This year will be no different, however we did decide to go to the indoor float preview that they had.

Most of the floats are done by the different LDS ward houses around the valley, but some are sponsored by local businesses. These are full sized floats, not the little handcarts that I remember putting together back in Meridian for Dairy Days.

Paul put William up on his shoulders so that he could see over all the people.


These are the faces that you get when you ask my boys to say 'cheese'.



One of the most impressive floats was sponsored by Walmart, Pepsi, and Primary Children's Hospital. It had characters from the movie 'How to Train Your Dragon' on it.

William liked that one because of the dragons.

Another awesome one was done by the Boy Scouts of America. They are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. The float had examples of the different scout uniforms from over the years on it.

This one is from the 1910's.

1930's...

1940's...

1950's...

1960's...

1970's...

This one was listed as a 'Sea Scout'. I didn't even know that the Boy Scouts ever had such a thing.

The last float that I really liked was all about why the seagull is the Utah state bird.

For those of you who don't know, the seagull is revered around here due to the fact that it saved the Mormon pioneers from certain doom when they first arrived in Utah.

During the first years that the first Mormon settlers came to Utah and started planting crops they were set upon by a plague of locusts. The story goes that they prayed to God for help and he sent a wave of seagulls to consume the locusts and save the crops. Thus, the seagull was named state bird when Utah finally joined the union.

On this float they have commemorated this event with dozens of sparkly locusts at the front.

At the middle the seagulls are gathering up the locusts.

And, at the back they are turning them into 'Locust Cookies'.

Something about this float makes me think of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. That guy would eat a locust cookie if offered one.

Eewwwww......