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| Big dog ready to party! |
It’s Mardi Gras season and the parades have begun. New Orleans has several parades, but so do the smaller towns all around there. We wanted to go see one in New Orleans but decided against it. It’s no fun driving around that city the way it is, but with the parades they expect extremely congested traffic, and you have to find a place to park 6 or 8 hours before the parade… yuk. So, today we decided on a smaller parade in Gulfport, Mississippi.
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| Get your boiled peanuts! |
We left early and found a place to park right on the parade route, but we were there, along with everyone else, only three hours before the parade started.
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| Tossing Beads |
This parade was quite different than the Hutch Water Carnival Parade at home. We would never see a Boiled Peanuts vendor there! Or street vendors selling Confederate flags. It’s a southern thing.
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| Street vendors |
Nobody sits quietly on the curb and watches the parade pass by. There is no “parade wave”. I heard people yelling: “Who Dat” or “Give me something” and wave your hands and jump up and down. The more animated you are the more stuff you get tossed your direction. It’s a mad frenzy for beads. There is very little candy tossed out, just beads, and stuffed animals, plastic cups, or little toys, and Moon Pies (huh? why??)
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| No sitting quietly on the curb. “Give me something!!!” |
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| Nobody goes empty handed |
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| Old motor homes never die, the just turn into Mardi Gras floats. |
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| Our Loot for the day |
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| There was a Girl Scout who lived on the parade route. Yay! I was afraid I wasn’t going to get any this year. |
The Nomadic Life 