Give me some of that Pioneer Spirit!

Yesterday we celebrated Pioneer Day here in Utah. (Also known as “Pie ‘n beer Day” to the non-Mormons, apparently. :) ) As you know, one of the reasons we decided to move to Salt Lake City was to immerse ourselves in an entirely different culture. Well…. it’s different, alright! But not always in the ways we expected it to be. I mean, everyone knows it’s the Mormon capital of the world. But we hardly knew a thing about Mormonism before we moved here, and it’s definitely been a surprising experience.

Well, anyway, I won’t bore you with all the details, but I DO have to share Pioneer Day with you. July 24 marks the anniversary of the day that Brigham Young and his, well, fellow pioneers discovered this area and decided it was the place they would settle. So it’s pretty much a huge celebration of the birth of the city as a refuge for the Mormons who had, to this point, been pursued and persecuted, but it’s also in a more general sense a celebration of “pioneer spirit,” which takes many different forms, from entrepreneurship to patriotism to religious leadership and evangelism to personal growth and the nurturing of values and whatnot. It’s like the Fourth of July on steroids. The whole state practically shuts down and everyone gets the day off, which I’ve never seen before for something other than a national holiday.

One of the biggest parts of the day is the Days of ’47 parade, which takes place in the early morning, shortly after the sunrise services and just before all the rodeos and picnics and fireworks later in the day. This is such a big deal that people literally camp out all along the parade route downtown the night before. Luckily we only live a couple of blocks away from where it starts, so we rolled out of bed and walked on down…. about an hour late, of course (as Jamie said, “Who has a parade at NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING?!”). There was still PLENTY to see, though!

We probably wouldn’t have been able to last the whole time anyway, because it was like 100 degrees and humid. HUMID. In Utah! This is what we moved out of Tennessee for, and here we are stuck in it again! Uggghhh….

Nothing like some flashy cowgirl outfits to get the party started.

There were LOTS of beauty queens on hand to grace us with that perfect wave…

… And lots of classic cars and wagons and whatnot… very cool.

They don’t mess around with these floats, now.

Good ole Brigham Young University…. the University of Utah’s biggest rival. Uh-oh…

And what Pioneer celebration would be complete without hula dancers? I mean, really. It was a very multicultural event, I have to say.

I’m sorry, but this is just downright creepy.

Samuel H. Smith… Good ole Joseph’s brother.

Mormon missionaries from around the world.

This next float was just kind of bizarre… The parade announcer said that it represented this story about a widow who plants some seeds, and a rooster eats the seeds, so she kills the rooster, reclaims the seeds, and makes soup out of him for dinner. So I guess the moral has something to do with resourcefulness…. ish?

All in all, it was a pretty fun time. I think next year we’ll have to partake in the “pie-n-beer” part of the day instead, though. That’s the pioneer spirit.