Our day was pretty typical but in late afternoon, we went with Jerry and Shirley to the Tempe Festival of Lights and fireworks. It was supposed to begin at 5: with activities but the boat parade didn’t begin until 7:00 when it was dark enough for the lights on the boats to gleam in the water. Actually, the ‘lake’ is really a river which has been dammed up to make it about 2 blocks wide so that people can boat in it. We and tens of thousands of our new best friends lined up on the cement wall waiting for the parade to begin. Note that we are all dressed warmly since this is actually winter here in Arizona.
The parade was about 50 decorated boats that floated by us. It was difficult to get a good picture of them since they were moving - in fact, here is a good one that I got. Yep, I sure do know how to handle my camera.
But here are a few of the better ones. Some were quite elaborately decorated like this one with palm trees.
And this one with lights shaped like a Christmas tree.
Would you believe that there were even canoes paddling along the river/lake behind 50' power boats?
But my best picture was of the boats returning to the start across the river from where they paraded.
Then we craned our necks up for the fireworks.
On our way back to the resort, we stopped at the Mormon Temple which is spectacularly lit up for the Christmas season. We have never seen so many lights. Every tree, every bush, even the grounds are decorated with different lights, reflected in the pool.
Then, inside they had a marvelous display of nativity scenes from around the world. Here are two: the first from Peru and the second a Navajo nativity on a woven Navajo rug.
The last one was my favorite - for sheer creativity: book pages that have been folded back and cut out to form the nativity scene.
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