July Fourth in the Park

Yesterday, July 4, We had our first planned event in the park. We set up a cookout atmosphere with a borrowed dunking tank added to our other play equipment, listed events for best-dressed in red, white and blue (three contests, one color each) and I wrote and hosted two rounds of trivia.

We were quite pleased with the turnout. We never had a huge crowd, but over the course of the day we had maybe 20 or 25 people come through. Some were from groups we're part of, but a good number came through the listings.

We tried to avoid making it too All-American, though we could not resist the temptation to dress in traditional colors ourselves. We were a little unsure many people would be around -- a lot of Americans would be doing things offline, and it wasn't a holiday for the rest of the world. We're thinking that if we do it again, not tied to a holiday, it might be even better attended.

The fireworks display at the end was magnificent. Morgana located a really well designed, 25-minute display made by Feras Nolan. This is a little expensive (L$400) and is one-use only, but if you want an event capper that will leave people happily stunned, you can't find better.

As the smoke cleared and people drifted away, we were surprised that we'd been at it for seven hours and it had flown by. We're looking forward to doing something else soon.