Let Freedom (and explosives) Ring!

In a dramatic change of pace from the traditional PHX celebration of staying home all day until it is cool enough to go out, then, sit in your air conditioned car and watch the fireworks at the closest Spring Training site - we find ourselves in a very comfortable 88 degree Olympia on Independence Day 2009. Let's being by noting why this is a better situation.

1. Temperature is (at their highest) about 20 degrees cooler. Of course, it will be 65 by the time fireworks start flying here and 95 back in PHX.

2. Setting is an important aspect of all great fireworks shows. While stadium fireworks can be awesome (see: Dodger Stadium), the shows in PHX are tame due to the dry environment. Real shows require water (see: Boston, Tempe Town Lake, and...below).

3. Government Restriction can put a damper on any celebration. While many in PHX like to celebrate events like Jihadists, most of us would just like to shoot some fireworks. Illegally obtaining them and then finding a location where the cops/neighbors won't notice can be tricky for valley residents. Thankfully, Olympia allows the sale of fireworks from July 1st-4th and the use of them July 3rd and 4th until 11pm.

All of these great things being in our favor, we STILL had to go to Tacoma for our celebration but not before stopping off at Freedom Fireworks (you know it is about freedom when there is a National Guard recruiting booth sharing a space with them. After dropping $40 down to some of the nicest people we've met on this trip, we ended up with an armory supply that looked something like this:















Of course no event is complete without a few obligatory shots of Rally being manipulated for the pleasure of our reading audience.



































You will have to excuse the quality. Late night, plus poor CFL lighting, plus flag in dog's mouth do not an photo-op make.

So once we had loaded up our fireworks, we headed off to Tacoma. Tacoma, for those who don't know (and really, why would you) has one of the best fireworks shows in the country. The fireworks are launched from a barge that sits out in the bay and there is a large public event along the waterfront all day (complete with air show). Not one for nightmarish parking or large air show crowds, we opted for the "good enough from far away" view. That put us at the top of the hill side at the end of a street that lead right down to where the barge was anchored. We made camp in someone's yard along with about 100 other people and enjoyed the pre-show activities that included rogue fireworks shot off by drunken teenagers and teenaged mothers taking out a life of mistakes on their boundary-testing toddlers. Good times.

The show got started at 10:15 which is literally when the sun went down. Some pics below.



























Whew. What a show. And because I am a parking ninja, we got out of the craziness ad on our way out of town. "To where?" you might ask. To University Place. This small suburb of Tacoma (that has no university) allows safe and sane fireworks within their city limits until midnight. Wanting to make sure we did everything by the book, we drove around U.P. until we found the perfect spot. A dead end street in a subdivision between an undeveloped lot and a forrest. Let the fun begin.






































After we were all out, we checked appendages to make sure they were all still there (all accounted for), cleaned up our mess, and hit the road back to Oly. All in all, it was one successful Independence Day up here in the PacNW.