A typical parade in Knoxville?

(this is Ben) Friday night was a very mild, pretty night here in Tennessee. It was one of those nights where it just seemed wrong to be inside, but with 3 kids and a pregnant wife options are very limited. While Leslie took Luke to soccer and Grace practice hand stands and Drew played with his train table, I flipped on the news. The live reporter was doing a piece on the Dogwoods Arts Festival parade that was going on that night at 7. We quickly rallied and got everyone ready and headed down town to what had to be the most interesting parade I had ever been to (that's after going to many Mardi Gras parades in STL.)

As each "float" approached you weren't sure what was going to be coming up next, but you could almost guarantee it was going to be interesting. The order would go something like this: small country school marching band, Harley riders for Christ, Soul line dancing team, Huge Dr Seuss balloons. Karate school with Chinese dragons, teenage girl "step" group, fire baton twirling girls, Son of the Confederate revolution, black school with boogy down majorettes, chainsaw competition dinner theater, wandering banjo squad, the Chick Filet cows, the Andy Griffith's Show look-a-like, and on and on it went for over an hour. The pictures below do it some justice but it was a very nice eclectic time in the South with beautiful weather, Rocky Top playing in the air and very nice people everywhere you looked.