Updated. Yesterday’s long Northwest Montana Fair parade featured excellent bands and music, fire trucks with flashing lights and loud sirens, pulchritudinous lasses on horseback, and political organizations from the left, right, far far right, and ersatz Monty Python Land. I stood near the intersection of Main and Center, photographing every entry. InterLake editor Frank Miele stood elsewhere, watching his son march with the outstanding Glacier High band. Below, a few of the 617 images that I shot.
The parade was traveling south to north when this character from ersatz Monty Python Land and his videographers passed me traveling north to south, crashing the party.
New. Here Vermin — who’s well named, by the way — has selfishly placed himself between the Glacier High band and the crowd (rife with Wolfpack parents) so that his camera equipped hagiographers can record him with the colorful band in the background. Vermin’s wit doesn't come within laughing distance of Pat Paulson’s, but he’s as big a camera hog as any U.S. Senator or presidential candidate. The parade’s organizers ought to send him a bill for the entry fee.
A candy lad returns to the mothership for a refill.
One of Kalispell’s finest, presenting a pleasingly professional image.
They played a rousing Sousa.
A trumpeter who knows how to be cool.
Doesn’t Flathead High School have any musicians who can march?
Marching musicians from Glacier High School. They looked sharp and sounded good.
Wolfpack percussionists set a smart pace.
The Oath Keepers 4-truck convoy.
Smiles were the only weapons on display.
An Oath Keeper in mufti with the look of a leader.
An old Oath Keeper, fading away, perhaps, but far from gone.
David Fern and Lynn Stanley lead the Flathead Democrats.
The Flathead Democrats just keep rollin’ along.
The Obama corner of the Flathead Democrats’ float.
State Senator Verdell Jackson and companion lead the Flathead Republicans up Main Street.
The Flathead has a truckload of Republican women.
Rep. Steve Daines is expected to run for the U.S. Senate. If — when — he does, State Senator John Sonju plans to run for the U.S. House. Nothing in this image argues otherwise.
Kalispell Mayor Tammi Fisher must beat State Representative Mark Blasdel in the primary next year to be the GOP’s nominee for SD-4.
At left, former State Senator Ryan Zinke escorts a wheelchair parader.
A closer look at Zinke, et al.
Columbia Falls’ blessing in the Montana House of Representatives, Floggin’ Jerry O’Neil. In the 2013 session of the legislature, he asked for a bill that would “allow defendant to bargain for corporal punishment.”
Kalispell’s Chamber of Commerce takes a hay ride.