Like many communities across the United States, Mendocino celebrates Independence Day with a parade of epic proportions. It’s legendary, and people come in from all over the coast to watch the parade. The parade starts out fairly mundane, as parades do, with law enforcement, military, and, of course, fire trucks.

This fire truck has a neat twist, an American flag integrated into the grille. I wonder if it counts as desecration when the grille gets covered in insects?

This is the cow man. He always marches in the parade, dragging along some sort of livestock. This year, the duck totally stole the show.

More behind the jump, for the sake of those on slow connections.

Brendan took pictures too. That’s Patti and Tristan behind him, along with Andrew and Sven. Please take note of Brendan’s nice, shiny camera. A lot of his pictures include the top of my head, because he was sitting right behind me and I kept moving because people kept walking into my frames.

There were people waving giant fish, although these were towards the end. I just thought you might like to know that they were there, since I have long ago given up on presenting the parade in chronological order.

There were some bellydancers, as well. Given the usual proliferation of scantily clad ladies, this group was remarkably restrained. And rather good, if I may say so myself.

Paul Bunyan showed up, along with the Belle of the Redwoods.

No parade would be complete without a jacked up truck and hollering women.

Stay tuned for hippies!