Ouray on the 4th

This is small town America. Ouray is the county seat with no stop light. This morning, the street, by 6:30am, was already filled with cars, parked along the side of Main Street. Many of them were trucks so families can sit in the back of them and watch the parade, a small American town, like thousands of others across the country today, having a parade to celebrate the country's birth.

Today is a day of tradition here, culminating in a fireworks display to challenge those in New York and Boston, only its been cancelled due to the fires ravaging the state. Still, the Ouray County Volunteer Fire and Mountain Rescue had their traditional pancake breakfast this morning in the community center on the second floor over the fire truck bays. The mountain rescue volunteer staff is up all night, right after the Volunteer Rescue Dance from the night before. These hearty souls stay up all night drinking beer and making pancakes as well as eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, gallons of coffee, juice and just about anything else that would go with a breakfast. Some, as you walk down the line, meet your eyes with their blood-shot ones and toast you with a half empty beer bottle. Just like pirates would do, if pirates were makers of pancakes. At 8, starts the Ourayrace 2012, a 10K run that heads north on Highway 550 and then back on Oak Street, circling around with a Hollywood finish coming down Main from the south of town. Lots of skinny, fit people run this as well as some show offs pushing their child, or someones child, in a stroller while pulling the family dog, or someones family dog.

The parade is at 10. There is a fly over sometime after the parade, about 11. One of the military branches sends some form of aircraft down the canyon, just as they reach the town, they light in the afterburners, setting off every car alarm in town. One year, it was a C-130 which has no afterburners but was fun to see a large plane fit into a reasonably tight canyon. Lots of 'oohs' and 'aahhs' on that one along with 'holy crap, its going to rain plane!' The highlight might be the fly over. Mine is the synchronized wiener dog team.

At 2 today is the Fire Hose Fights. Teams divide up and try to knock each other over with a fully functional, fully on, stream of water from a fire hose. Teams actually train for this, have custom made helmets and body armor. It has been described as getting hit with a Barry Bonds bat, only constant. Now, to me, that sounds like fun.

At 4 today, the concert in the park starts. I'm not sure if this takes the place of the fireworks usually seen about 9 or if this was part of the plan the whole time, but music in a small town park actually sounds like fun. We'll let you know.

Today, even with all of America's problems, issue, disagreements, we can still come together and celebrate the reason we are able to have all those issues. I  don't think Iran has a synchronized wiener dog team. They, apparently, aren't that sophisticated.