Rhododendron Festival – 2009 Pacific Wonderland

I live in heaven, I love where I live, I live where I love. Florence is a small town to most, sometimes too big to me, but it offers all I want. And my husband is willing to commute eighty miles each way to work. Thank goodness.

On the third full weekend each May Florence celebrates our native Macrophyllium – Rhododendrons.

And some not so native, but beautiful all the same.


We do this with an annual festival that is three days of sun (oh please lord), classic cars, and a parade.


My job is to run all over town on Saturday of the festival, interview people, and remind everyone of the sights they don’t want to miss, bring them the sounds of what they are missing, and remind them to cross traffic on Highway 126 at signaled intersections. In Florence there are only four.

This year I had a two hour break mid day so we started by visiting the car show.
Over four hundred entered this year’s event at Three Rivers Casino. What a cluster !&#! of a traffic jam… but the cars were divine.














Ducky and I have a Rhody tradition. After I get off work Saturday afternoon… usually around 6:30, we go to old town Florence and watch KCST’s Classic Car Cruise.



After we sit and watch the first two or three circuits the cars make, Ducky and I begin walking.

Now, true Florence is not large, Old Town is even smaller, but it makes for a nice walk, we stop and chat with old friends, watch the cars and make our way to the west end of Bay street for a Mocha. Then we walk all the way to the east end of Bay Street (wow, three blocks) and have an elephant ear from the carnival and find a bench on the boardwalk and enjoy the evening.

For the week or so before Rhody Festival I write a parade script. Spend the majority of Sunday of Rhody Weekend broadcasting said script in all its hometown Rhody glory.





BTW, it’s really hard to take pictures while you’re broadcasting the parade.

And then I go home and crash.

I’m at the crashing part.

Sith,
Cele
PS just 363 days until Rhododendron Festival is here (May 22nd – 24th 2010.)