Truckee’s Fourth of July Parade

This past weekend, I was honored to be invited to take part in the annual Truckee 4th of July parade.

The Tahoe Donner 4 Wheelers Club invited me to join them in the parade. This year’s parade focused on the TD4W Club’s Trails & Ales event this July 18th/19th. See the blog below for details or visit the TD4W website: http://td4wheelers.com/

The club had eight vehicles in the parade, two of them towing trailers. The first trailer was a flatbed with a Jeep poised on the trailer as if it were going down a trail. I liked the fact that they had a forest service (FS) carsonite stake stating that the trailer was an official OHV route. The second trailer was the Rubicon Trail Foundation (RTF) trailer being towed by me. I had re-rigged the airlines and had cracked the lowering valve on the trailer so I could raise the trailer while driving down the road and then the trailer would slowly lower itself.

For the most part, the parade went well. There were a lot of people there to watch. Fortunately, our group was toward the front of the parade.

As we exited the parade route, the rain started. No big deal as it was forecast for ‘showers’. We pulled in to the old lumber/rail yard on the east end of town and started to pull off the decorations. That’s when the skies opened up and started pouring rain. We worked faster. We had to get the decorations off from around the Jeep on the trailer and then the Jeep off the trailer.

Then the lightning started. And it was close. You count between the lightning and the thunder. Every five seconds is a mile. We had thunder within two seconds! And it was all around us. Some of us did not have hardtops on out Jeeps. At least I had a bikini top. A few didn’t have tops at all!