Well, our 4th of July experience was nothing short of interesting. The Antelope Valley Fairgrounds hosted the fireworks extravaganza for the Lancaster area (Rosamond doesn't have anything), so we went to check out the festivities. It's a good thing we went early because the grandstands filled up pretty fast. Of course, I don't know why they weren't more full when we got there, considering the Rural Olympics were going on.

What?! You don't know what Rural Olympics are?!!! Well, we're not quite sure what all it entails, either, but we did catch the tail end of Potato Javelining...which consisted of a race with someone hanging out the window of two "antique" cars with a javelins and picking up potatoes. The winner was the one who picked up all the potatoes and crossed the finish line first. As if that wasn't exciting enough...they ALSO had a truck 'n' transfer race where two semis unloaded trailers, dumped hypothetical freight, etc, and then raced back to the starting line. Weird. Adam was a little disappointed that there wasn't a demo derby....but neverfear, there was a derby listed on the fair schedule (along with David Cook, Leeann Womack, and The Beach Boys).

After the Olympics wrapped up, we got to hear the musical stylings of a band I don't remember the name of. At the beginning of their set, they asked for requests...of which the majority wanted Michael Jackson songs (which severely frightened me. It's always worrisome to have someone else try and sing a good song....though I would've been up for hearing him do some Smooth Criminal.) Though we speculated that he only played ONE request (which was Michael Jackson), they actually weren't too terrible. Here's a taste (forgive the quality. I only had my cellphone with me.):



And here's a bit of the Michael Jackson song for your listening pleasure:



The fireworks started not too long afterwards. They were set to some good ol' fashioned cheesy America music. The thing that was ironic to me was that, in the mix, they actually played "America" from West Side Story. Considering the demographic here, and what the song is actually about, I thought it a strange choice of music. I got a couple good pictures of the fireworks with my phone. I was surprised at how good they turned out:



This was the beginning of the show.



Here's a picture of how close we were. I didn't zoom in, but they weren't lighting the fireworks off too far from us. You can see the smoke along the bottom of the picture.

And that's all I have...not because I didn't take anymore pictures...but rather because the fireworks broke and the show was pretty much over after that. It was kind of disappointing, but it happens...and they said they'd have them do it at the fair, instead (though I kinda think they might have already been planning on having fireworks there, but whatever.) So, no grand finale, but at least we got a couple smiley face fireworks in there before the mechanisms crapped out.

We hope you all had a good holiday. It's time to turn in for the night...if the dog stays calm with the neighbors lighting off fireworks. Hopefully we'll get more sleep than last night when the neighbor's dog barked almost the entire night. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a new bed when you can't sleep.

Well, g'nite....and Happy 4th. Peace.