9:36 pm - 76 degrees - light scattered cloud layer...
We decided to leave the
mountain for the Fourth of July holiday and took a road trip to the Long Beach
Peninsula. Wow! If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you
have not experienced the Fourth of July until you’ve hit the Long Beach
Peninsula on the Washington coast. This
is one of those has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed events and WOW! was it ever
impressive!
Just imagine 28 miles of uninterrupted
beach where people park 2, 3, 4 rows deep, grilling on their BBQ’s, sitting
around bonfires, and letting loose with thousands of dollars worth of good old fireworks
– mortars, roman candles, rockets, a 12 foot burning man made out of
firecrackers! It seems they’re all okay to use at
the beach! Wow!
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| We went down to the beach at noon and people were already staking their claim and getting set-up for the evenings festivities. |
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| This was just one of the huge sections of beach that a group had marked off for their own firework display. |
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| This particular display even had a 12 foot tall burning man made out of firecrackers! |
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| Long Beach Parks & Rec Department estimated around 300,000 people were there to enjoy the fireworks show on the beach! |
As soon as the sun set, the
city of Long Beach started the evening off with the their main event, an
impressive $15,000 - $20,000 display in front of the Long Beach Boardwalk. Then the beach turned into a free-for-all - a
wild and crazy night where each person was trying to out-do the guy next to him
and the results were AMAZING!
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| We went back down to the beach just after 7pm to find a spot. Our little guy was very excited and couldn't wait for the fireworks to start! |
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| Sunset on the beach and then.... |
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| ...the fireworks began! |
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| The kids finally settled down as the awesome light show continued on! |
After the smoke has settled and
the last firework has been set off, what’s left is thousands and thousands of
dollars worth of paper packaging and cardboard tubes.
What makes this Fourth of July
event special is the huge volunteer beach clean-up that happens the next morning. Large dumpsters are located at all the beach
entrances so people can throw out their own garbage that night. Then the next morning hundreds of volunteers and
community groups organize clean-up schedules to pick up all the remaining debris. By noon, there’s very little left of what
happened just over 12 hours earlier.
