and we're off to toronto!

After a late night last night, we woke up super early to leave for Toronto - the buses loaded at 5am!  There are no pictures of this event, because my brain was still asleep.  As you can imagine, we slept on the buses a good amount of the day.  Sleeping was complicated by the fact that we were not just driving to Toronto, however -  we were playing in the Montrose 4th of July Parade, which stepped off at 11am.  So we got some sleep, but then had a gig.  I will say, this was the 4th of July Parade to end all 4th of July Parades - it was a major event.  

There were LOTS of people there, as you can see from the photos.  There was a flashmob at the beginning of the parade, people in the crowd dressed as characters (check out Woody!), and many, many floats and groups involved in the parade.  You can check out my pictures below - they represent about half (!) of the parade, as I headed out with the band once they came through.  The band looked great! 

The band even made the local news stations' clip about the parade - look for us about 30 seconds into the clip and then again at the end.

After the parade, we enjoyed a great lunch, and then.... back on the bus!  We crossed the border into Canada around 6pm, and then stopped at a mall near Hamilton for dinner.  Then we boogied on to Toronto, where we stopped to check out the view from the CN Tower before heading to our hotel.

The CN Tower is pretty amazing - it is one of the Wonders of the Modern World, and is TALL.  There was a moment in the elevator going up (you go up something like 115 stories in less than a minute) that I was pretty scared - in addition to the glass window, parts of the floor were glass.  I do NOT want to stand on a glass floor 115 stories up.  Evidently, I'm one of few - they have a glass floor area in the viewing area, and there were lots of people standing on it, lying on it, and otherwise enjoying the sensation of looking down a LONG way.  (I delegated that picture - no way was I standing on that floor!)

Crazy futuristic security - you stepped in and it blew puffs of air at you that tested for particles of anything forbidden.

The view through the glass floor - I guess that's the aquarium down below?

Craziness!

I'm not that crazy about heights, but the view was AMAZING.

The photos on the observation deck were really hard to get - the lighting outside was red, and every minute or so would flash white for what seemed like a split second - you had to hit it at just the right moment, or you got a really interesting photo.

After leaving the CN Tower - we could have spent much more time there, but we were also ready for the end of a loooooong day - we finally reached our hotel.  Hopefully we will all sleep well tonight, as we have a busy day tomorrow - the Lions International Parade in the morning, lunch at a cool market, time at the Convention (pin trading!), dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, and a teen dance sponsored by the Connecticut Lions.  I'm tired just thinking about all that!