Saturday, December 3, 2016

Los Gatos Holiday Parade 2016

Although we have lived next to Los Gatos for many years, we have never witnessed the annual Christmas Day Parade. Since our son was playing trumpet in Dartmouth's Symphonic Band, he and his bandmates were scheduled to march in the Los Gatos Holiday Parade on Saturday, December 3, 2016.


We arrived in Los Gatos relatively early, around 9:00 a.m. (though the Parade was scheduled to start promptly at 11:00 a.m.), and we had already noticed parking was quite tricky. Once we found a parking spot, we set up our chairs for the best location to see the Parade (lots of spots were already taken) and then decided to get breakfast at Amour Patisserie (our favorite local spot).

Both Inna and I ordered a couple of quiches and coffee. We enjoyed the quiches and caught up on our news.

Around 10:30 a.m., we returned to our car to pick up camera gear. I would shoot the Parade with a Canon 5DS with a 70-200 f/2.8 telephoto and record video on my Canon G7x. I set up the G7x on a tripod and recorded all the marching bands.

The Leigh High School marching band looked very sharp. I was surprised that the Branham High School band was not marching.


A guy was doing crazy bicycle stunts right in front of us. He was doing loops!


The Dartmouth Middle School Marching band (Symphonic Band) marched nicely in formation.



Alex plays the 4th trumpet, marching right in the rear of the Dartmouth column.



Here is Alex marching with the trumpet in his hands. He looked sharp.



There were a surprisingly high number of dance troupes. I never knew that there were so many dance studios in Los Gatos.







There were quite a few horsemen at the rear of the Parade.


The Parade finished with Santa Claus bringing presents on his sleigh.


I took a lot more photos, and they are all available here.

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