Yesterday began with a big bang!

One of the boys and I (one was home sick) went to the Pioneer Museum in Flagstaff for an Independence Day Festival. It was a Living History day with demonstrations about the Civil War life. 

We got up early to beat the monsoon and possible hail storm.  The first canon firing was at 10am and we had about a 30 minute drive to get to the Pioneer Museum for the Civil War Living History Day.  We arrived about 5 minutes early for this big boom!

Civil Way Living History

After the canon firing we went down to their “camp”.  It is too bad that throughout most of my pics, modern day-to-day life was in the background of many of my pics.

Once, again, there is that beautiful flag of ours…. the smoke going past after the canon fire.

Back to the canon….. the mountain men told us all about the canon, caliber, bore type, how to load.  They were very knowledgeable and answered many questions from the onlookers, too.

An officer.  He explained about the rifle and the bullets.. he also told about his uniform - the beige on the trim indicated that he was from New York (I think that is where it was - old age and no memory, sorry). And that other colors meant that the soldiers were from other areas.

And horses, again!! Yeah!! Well, actually, there was just this one… I think he looked like Wild Bill Cody, but I don’t think he was from the Civil War era.

There were ladies demonstrating tatting, another who was dyeing wool, a smithie making things from iron, and many other demonstrations… the cook was using old dutch ovens on an open fire.  He made this cornbread and beans.  The cornbread was green but it and the beans were actually very tasty.

Our weekend began with the annual parade.  The day started off great but ended in near disaster.  The weather turned from mild to hail coming down as big as my thumb nail and made the ground white, as if it had snowed!  It was like walking on marbles.  There was a watermelon stand….

I LOVE parades!!  This is one of the reasons - please stand and salute

The 4-H Beauties - I think I missed a few of the other beauties, though

And, always at the end, another of my favorites of a parade - horses - actually, ponies, but they are always too cute!  I was too busy visiting with the riders of the full sized horses to get pics……

Then end of the parade was like this…. wet wet WET! and painful when they hit your head!  Usually people stay around and visit but this year everyone RAN for cover!

I took the above pics near the Grand Canyon last Saturday and the next 2 near home the same afternoon - all while driving, that is why there is a reflection in a couple of them.