Last year, the kids walked in the kiddie parade that happens directly before the Grand Parade in our town. When they got finished, they had one request, "We want to do the big parade next year!" We're always open for creating family memories, so we set about becoming float builders. In order to save ourselves a lot of work, we used the same theme for the float that I have at cub day camp this year, jungle. I wanted to make it a bit more meaningful than jungle so I tried to come up with some way to incorporate family, since that's what we are and why we were doing it. I came up with the slogan, "Family... it's a jungle of fun!"
Do you want to build a float like ours? Find an old tent trailer, some broken playground equipment, a half rotten park bench, your uncle's lawn mower and some jungle/luau decorations. Assemble them all together into a fine mess and call it a float. We did it in the Dickson tradition of re-use, re-purpose, re-imagine. I've been working on the day camp decorations for weeks but the actual float building didn't begin until July 2nd.
The base of our float is the trailer we use for the produce co-op. It began life at least 30 years ago as a tent trailer. Dode found it in black berry bushes several years ago, tore it apart and put a flat metal bed on it. We didn't have a use for it so we pushed it off into the grass on the edge of the property and forgot about it. We never got it licensed since we weren't planning to use it. It just sat in the grass and slowly rusted up. A few months after beginning the produce co-op, the produce company said they wouldn't bring the pallet jack up our driveway anymore with our produce (we'd had a few dumped pallets and it really drained their battery to come up our gravel driveway). We yanked the trailer out of its nest of tall grass where it had become enmeshed and put it to use every other Saturday hauling 1-2 tons of produce up the driveway. It's not very big but I thought it would make a fine float.
Dode was worried that our 12 passenger van would dwarf the trailer and thought towing it with a riding lawnmower would be more in scale with it. Our rider mower isn't running very smoothly currently and we had visions of backfiring and just plain dying in the middle of the parade. We borrowed Uncle Dave's lawn mower on July 2nd, problem solved (thanks Uncle Dave).
This photo was taken shortly after the co-op started using it.
You can still see pieces of grass stuck to it.
Using a lawnmower to tow a car trailer presents a new challenge. The back of the lawnmower where you hook things on to tow, intended for small yard trailers, is really low and it was not designed to have a ball needed to tow a full size trailer. When we looked at hooking our trailer up to the lawn mower on July 2nd, we knew it would never work. It was tipped down at too much of an angle and would drag on the ground. On July 3rd, Dode's dad came over and he and Dode figured out a way to make it work. They went out to our scrap metal pile and found a piece of playground equipment (we'd received it last year when a friend who is the head of his homeowners association was re-doing his neighborhood playground). They figured out a way to attach that piece of metal to the trailer so that it would hook up to the lawnmower. It had to be removable so we could tow the trailer to the parade, hook it up to the lawnmower, pull it down the parade route, and then take it apart to bring it home. A little welding, cutting, drilling, testing, and repeating the process a few times and we have a car trailer that can be hooked to a lawnmower. It's nice to have a father-in-law that can do anything with metal; thanks Lynn. It sounds like a lot of work but sometimes you have to do things just to know you can!
working on the adapter
Next we had to figure out decorations. I've been hard at work making decorations for cub camp. I figured I could re-purpose a lot of them for our float. Our float is topped with a canopy that will be used at the entrance to camp. Everyone will walk through our jungle tunnel to get into camp.
jungle entrance ready for camp
close up of canopy
At the parade, it gave us a top to the float. We had to do some modifications to make it work for the float. At camp, the PVC pipe legs will slip over rebar pounded into the ground to give it stability. We couldn't pound rebar into the float, but Dode had the metal frame from our old trampoline in pieces in the garage. (He'd used the legs of the trampoline for the base of our giant slip and slide. click here for more details!) The distance between the leg connections was perfect for the legs on the canopy I made. He screwed the metal frame pieces to the trailer, slipped in a rebar, and stuck the PVC legs around that. We had a nice solid roof.
Sorry for the blurry photo, it's a crop.
You can see the metal pieces going across the trailer. I painted the upright parts green to hide them.
The plywood jungle animals will be scattered around camp. They lined the float and hid the ugly fiberglass wheel wells and the old cracked tires. I already had the table mini skirt from the last time we did the jungle theme at day camp.
Anastaya.
I had a Cleopatra outfit I'd gotten 90% off at Wal-Mart. She wore it without the big gold collar and crown that came with it and we added a long black wig. She was a jungle princess.
We borrowed a gorilla suit for Elizabeth.
Miriam was a Hawaii girl, dressed up in a mumu turned dress with some creative sewing and a lei.
William had a lion costume in the closet from a few Halloween's ago.
Isaac wore some Indiana Jones clothes I'd purchased for one of the classes we're doing at camp.
I already had safari clothes I was planning to wear at cub camp.
Some of our costumes might have been a stretch with the jungle theme, but everyone was happy.
We spent the morning of the Fourth of July decorating and putting together our float.
Just getting started, fighting over who gets to attach what animal and which one goes where.
Good things we have a big area to spread out around because we used it!
Getting closer to the finish line
On our test drive.
We lost a bit of greenery but other than that, it seemed like it would work. Dode was most worried about the canopy but it was nice and solid. Then it was time to take everything apart so we could load the lawnmower onto the trailer, pile everything else around it, and bring everything to the parade staging area.
Taken apart and ready to head to the parade. Can you see why we didn't want to use the van? The trailer looks TINY!
This look reminds me a lot of what the boat looks like when we go camping with it, things piled everywhere!
It was soon time to head down to town and we set off down the driveway. The worst part of our driveway when you're towing a trailer is the transition from our downhill driveway to the flat street. Sure enough, we managed to drag two of our animals on the ground before we made it to the road. We'd brought the electric screwdriver along so with some quick animal removal, we were ready to go. We drove there slowly, flashers going, while Isaac and I watched out the rear windows of the van to make sure nothing fell off.
I was a bit nervous as we drove there because one of the rules was you had to be insured. How do you insure a riding lawnmower and a home built trailer that's never been on the road before? I'd given them a copy of our renter's insurance and auto insurance but I wasn't sure they'd be happy with it. I got there to sign in and gave them our name. "Could it be under another name?" "No." "Who are you with?" "No one, just our family." More looking at the registration page. I knew I was registered because I'd been receiving emails about the parade. "Oh, here it is, under the name 'family'." They checked our paperwork and said everything was in order and I could breathe a sigh of relief.
We had to take everything off the float to get the lawnmower off, install our adapter, and re-decorate the float before the parade. Once we had the float put back together, we walked around town until it was time to get back to the float and put on our costumes.
Lined up and waiting for the parade to begin. The only thing I bought for the parade was the banner. I'll hang it up somewhere at cub camp.
Anastaya says she won't be sitting by Elizabeth next time because the gorilla hogged all the attention! Elizabeth was really hamming it up, making gorilla motions and pointing at people. She loved it! Miriam and William enjoyed waving at the crowd and seeing some of their friends. We recognized quite a few people as we went by.
Aunt Viv is running up to get a good shot.
While I was taking a photo of Aunt Viv, she was taking pictures of us.
a silly gorilla and a beautiful girl
The kinds of reactions Elizabeth was getting.
The girl in pink looks dumbfounded, the mom looks a bit scared and the boy with the green bag? I don't know what emotion that is!
Indiana Jones never looked so good!
Hi Grandma Sharon, Ellie, Sheri and Seth
(and Anastaya's friend Sidney 2nd from the left front row!)
I had a few butterflies as we started the parade. How would our float be received? Would the children decide they hated every minute of it? It turned out great. We heard lots of "Great float! I love your float!" saw lots of people pointing and smiling, and saw lots of people take photos of us. Part way down we heard a bunch of girls crying out, "Isaac! Isaac!" A bunch of girls he's friends with at school had recognized him and were excitedly waving and cheering. Isaac ate it up. As we finished the parade route, I could finally stop smiling. I felt like Tour Guide Barbie at the end of the 2nd Toy Story, "Oh my gosh, my cheeks are killing me! I can't keep smiling like this anymore! I'm exhausted!"
We earned 2nd place for our float. The kids call it the 2nd place curse since I also got 2nd in the Supermom contest and Anastaya got 2nd last year for Most Patriotic in the kiddie parade. The kids think we need to get a trophy case to display our awards. The little Dicksons were totally wound up with excitement after the parade. I'm sure they would have loved to get home and blow off some extra energy. We couldn't just drive the 2 miles home, we had to pull onto a side street and take everything apart for the drive home.
While we were disassembling things, someone walked by and said, "Who were you representing, I couldn't tell?" "Just family." "Family?" "Yes, our kids wanted to make float, so we did." A puzzled, "Oh..."
They are already talking about next year. Poor Dode! He has to be the one to carry off our wild ideas. At least it will be less work next year since we already have the adapter for the trailer to be towed by a lawn mower. He just has to keep track of where he puts it! He's already brainstorming how to get a giant rocket on our float with mist/fog coming out. I hope it's a hot day!
Next year's day camp/parade theme? Outer Space. I need a Family... banner that goes with outer space. Any ideas?
Wow!!! Next year. I hope to be there ..how about Family...we have a blast or what a blast or
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