everybody loves a parade

dolled up, originally uploaded by Lizzie~Belle.

I went up to Brattleboro, Vermont yesterday with sea_dark_wine and justjanus for the Strolling of the Heifers parade. The rain cleared up just in time, and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

But there weren't any heifers in the actual parade! There was one very stubborn gal at the beginning, but she wouldn't cooperate so she dropped out. We had to wander around the town common for a bit before we found any. This one looked very pretty in her flower garland, but she was pretty unhappy about being tied up and gawked at.

There was a really big crowd in town for the festivities. It was good to see that; the town suffered a lot of flood damage during ex-hurricane Irene a couple years ago. It's a nice town.

We had lunch at a funky restaurant, where the food was really good but took forever to arrive.

On the walk back up to the car, we wandered around a cool old cemetery, reading the interesting epitaphs and looking at the nifty carvings. There were some awesome names in the 18th & 19th centuries! A little secret of mine: I get ideas for character names from old cemeteries.