Riverfest 2009

The City of Hartford hosts a festival every 4th of July to celebrate our Nation's independence. There is an area downtown known as Adriaen's landing with lawn steps and a stage along the Connecticut River. It's really beautiful there. Along the walk-way to the landing various vendors set up booths with fun things for adults and kids to do including face painting, henna, radio contests, newspaper contests, bouncy things for kids, and of course food vendors. For some reason (ah-hem budget cuts) they opted to have the celebration on July 11th, a full week AFTER 4th of July. A.R. and I attended anyway and had a great time visiting the various booths, eating Thai food and funnel cakes, listening to the bands, watching the crowd, and then enjoying the fireworks at the end of the evening.

The bridge over I-91 to Adriaen's Landing

The Mayor of Hartford made a small speech which was surprising considering some recent allegations against him late last year. There were a few "boos" in the audience when he was announced. He was actually invited to our wedding as he's an old family friend of A.R's side of the family, but he didn't come. There was a Navy orchestra that performed and there were 3 Army sky divers that jumped from a plane and landed in the river. They are nuts for swimming in the polluted Connecticut river but hopefully their sky diving suits will prevent them from getting Montezuma's revenge!

The Navy band plays with the CT River in the background

A fetching self portrait listening to the bands (Eek!)

We thought the fireworks might be postponed due to some looming thunderstorms, but the city pushed the fireworks up to 9pm and they finished just as the first rain drops were beginning to fall. It was nice to walk back to our car hip-to-hip under the umbrella we used on our wedding day. Here are some of the fireworks taken with my crappy point and shoot. I need to get a new camera stat.