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A friend and I went to the Oktoberfest up at Snowbird yesterday.  You can read about it on her blog, here.

A couple of weeks ago, she danced at the Salt Lake Peace Gardens, and I tagged along to get some pictures.

And finally, the Liberty Park (and other) fireworks on Pioneer Day.

Utah in July: Fireworks Season.

Living in Utah, if you have war related PTSD, July is a good month to go on vacation.  For the whole month.

You see, we have U.S. Independence Day (4^th of July) and then 20 days later we have Pioneer Day (24^th of July).  That celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and his LDS followers in the Salt Lake Valley.

Which means that we have 14 days of fireworks in one month.  And that’s if everyone follows the rules, which allow them 3 days before and 3 days after each of the holidays.  In reality, we have a full month where you can expect your quiet evenings to be interrupted with explosions at any time.

This 24^th I decide to go up on the hill and see what pictures I could get of the fireworks.  I got up there around 9:00, even though the official fireworks wouldn’t start until 10:00, and I’m glad I did.  The first thing that struck me was that it sounded and looked like I was looking down on a town under siege.  Fireworks were going off all across the valley.  I could see explosions all over the place, and the smoke their launch left hanging right above the trees.  And I could hear popping and banging all around me, some of the louder explosions echoing off the mountains.  It was weird, surreal.  Hopefully you can get an idea of it from this video.  Keep in mind I took it with my cell phone, so don’t expect too much clarity.

Here are some of the pictures I took.  It surprised me that I liked some of the lighter ones better than the ones taken later at night.

 

 

 

P.S. – Lisa, this is where I took the pictures from:

This is it.

.... I worked my last day at Granite High. I wasn't even supposed to work, but the district planned this big Open House there tonight, before the South Salt Lake did their fireworks display from the football field, as usual. So the principal called me earlier this week to see if I would be willing to work, patrolling halls or helping out selling memorabilia. I ended up selling the "Farmer Forever" Granite High t-shirts. From 2 to 8 tonight I sold over 900 t-shirts. It was insane. The halls were more packed than when school was in session, but I guess that's what you get when you close a school that has been open for 103 years.
.... Not only did I get paid at my regular rate, but we also got VIP seating for the fireworks. Which meant that we were directly under the fireworks when they went off. It was pretty cool, you could feel the explosions on your body. One of the drawbacks - falling debris. Nothing that was burning hit anyone, and mostly they were ashes or smaller than a dime. But we did have one firey misfire crash into the lawn about 10 yards away from us. Yeah, fun stuff.