Aloha Festival Parade

This morning we woke up early and headed down to Kapiolani Park, where we ran the short 2 mile loop. It was raining lightly throughout the run, which was actually very refreshing given that it was a warm and muggy morning.

After our run, we headed down a few blocks to have some coffee and find a spot on the curb to watch the Annual Aloha Parade, which is one of the major events of the 61st Aloha Festival. Thousands of tourists and locals alike come out to Waikiki to watch the marching bands, military vehicles, elaborate floats, hula dancers, bands, and other costumed characters fill the streets with their Aloha Spirit. The theme of this year's festival is related to the Historical Royal Court, and thus each island's royalty was represented in the parade. In most cases, this meant that each island had a group of people on horses and were led by someone holding a sign that read (for example), "Princess of Kauai". The women on the horses wore richly and vibrantly colored dresses with bountiful flowers on their hair and in leis around their necks. Following each of these groups of horses, there was as assigned group of (usually) kids and teenagers who were clearly on pooper-scooper-duty. The funny part of this is that there seemed to be a bit of a competition going on as to who could have the most elaborate miniature float, which was actually the holder for the poop. One of the pictures above features our favorite of these--it was made to look like a wave and had a surfboard with one of the pooper-scoopers riding it.

Maggie loved hearing the marching bands--this is her favorite part of the parade. We really enjoyed this and are looking forward to the Rose Parade in January--it is supposed to be even more elaborate since it is televised, etc.