Azalea Festival Weekend

We celebrated the 61st Azalea Festival on the weekend. The main event is the parade down 3rd street from 9am -12pm. So we dressed up in some pretty spring dresses and arrived just after 9. We got caught in a traffic jam, paid $5 to park in a vacant lot(!) and then wandered through the thousands on people lining 3rd street to get to our bleacher seats (we purchases tickets thanks to the GE social committee). There were hundreds of floats that cruised past carrying beauty queens, princesses, dancing troupes and cartoon characters. There were school marching bands, motorbikes, vintage cars, trains, horses and clowns. Pretty much anyone with a car and a desire to parade was allowed to, so there was the unusual entry of 4 average looking cars advertising bond bailing services (i wrote the phone number down for the next time i am arrested) Lucy's favourites were the several fire trucks that went past with sirens blaring. We had a great time waving and clapping but the best bit was that Lucy enjoyed it so much she sat relatively still for almost 2 hours and then we headed off to explore.

The other unusal aspect to this whole event was the number of beauty queens/princesses/junior queens/tiny princesses that were involved. There would have been at least 30 'winners' of various beauty pageants. There was the Shrimp queen, the Christmas queen, the Castle Hayne Queen and the list goes on and on. What is the motivation for entering such a competition? I hope they win some scholarship money. It was scary that many little girls were dressed with lots of makeup and tiaras and made to look like women. I discussed this whole thing with someone and they said that this only happens in the South. Not sure if this is true given that i saw an ad for the Miss America competition being shown live during prime time across the nation.

After the parade we headed down to the riverfront and browsed the stalls, drinking Port City Java, and then stopped off for lunch at a little cafe. We had a fabulous time and were sorry we had missed out last year having only just gotten off the boat. Next year we'll try and do one of the garden tours at a Southern mansion.