Celebrating the Fourth of July in Solano County meant driving somewhere to watch fireworks. For most of my childhood, that meant getting in the car and driving out to Walters Rd., parking near the Cloud Nine bar, eating licorice and watching the fireworks that the Air Base people put on. It was fun because I love licorice (both flavors, but the red ones were the ones we got).
You couldn't buy fireworks in Solano County because they were illegal so I never experienced all the dangers (and fun, I guess) of setting them off in your front yard.
On Friday, we went to Sacramento because my cousin got married. We left her house around 9:15 p.m., just as cities were beginning their own fireworks displays. My mom had patriotic music playing in her car so it made for a good background to what we would see along the way.
In my cousin's neighborhood, every other house had families in the driveways sitting in their lawn chairs as they set their own fireworks off in the middle of the street. In fact, my cousin's neighbors were setting them off and all the kids from my cousin's party set up blankets across the street on the lawn to watch. Diana was freaking out and so were my sister and I. That's not something we grew up with...why was it cool?
As we drove home, we continued to see fireworks go off all over the place. So strange, I told Matt. In Monterey County, where he grew up, fireworks weren't illegal so that was the norm. They did sparklers themselves on the Fourth. We didn't even do that.
The idea of setting off fireworks right in front of your house was a foreign concept to me. I knew that people did that, but I didn't realize HOW many people did it. I felt like I was in a foreign country...experiencing someone else's culture. You just didn't see that in Solano County growing up.
The cool thing was driving home on Interstate 80 and seeing fireworks go off up ahead in the cities approaching - Davis, Winters, Dixon, Woodland...We saw them all until about 9:45 p.m. and then they all kinda stopped at the same time.
That was an awesome way to celebrate the Fourth. It's kinda chaotic (and scary) to go down to Suisun City or downtown Vacaville on the Fourth with a little one. It's noisy, there's a lot of people, etc. So to watch fireworks from the car where she can still see them and appreciate them a little was pretty special. I don't know that we will make that trek on purpose every year, but it was fun this year!
2 comments:
When we left FF last year at the fireworks, we could see all of the cities having their shows from 80. It was pretty cool. This year when we got home from Dusty's, I could see the ones from Cal Expo from our front door...but only the ones that got really high. And then Chris started in on his from the street. Pretty entertaining!
I hear ya, there are a lot of houses up here that do it in our neighborhood. We stayed in Vacaville and watched them. We have a nice spot we go to by the creek walk, we call it the family zone. It's away from all the "Crazy" crowds of people. When we pulled into our driveway about 10:30 that night, the neighbors were just finishing there show. It was nice seeing you at the parade, Diana is so cute.
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