Independence Day

Yesterday we celebrated the anniversary of our nation's "birth" in a very traditional way...food and fireworks.  It was the first time for Baylee and Rhianna to see fireworks.  As I told Pastor Bixby (who was kind enough to host us for a barbecue), fireworks combines two of my least favorite things...crowds and noise.  But I also knew the girls would enjoy it.  

Because of the condition of the Rock River, I suspected that Rockford's annual fireworks display would be even more crowded than usual (normally a number of people would observe the fireworks from their boats on the river, but recent flooding has caused the river to be shut down to boat traffic for safety reasons).  Rather than try to find parking and a place to sit downtown, I suggested we find an alternative venue for the fireworks.  Somehow we decided to watch the fireworks at Rockford Speedway.  This is our third year in Rockford and we hadn't visited the speedway yet (trivia for those of you that aren't familiar with Rockford...Danica Patrick got her star by racing at the Rockford Speedway).  

There's a little irony that I would suggest the speedway given my aversion to noise.  I'm glad that we went.  There were a number of races, including a junior circuit (kids as young as 11), and, my favorite, a race where spectators were allowed to enter their cars and race a single lap around the track with other spectators.  For some reason it was very exciting seeing people risk their Corvettes and other classic cars to win a meaningless race.  I think there was this schadenfreude streak in me that wanted to see one of the cars hit the wall (but not actually hurt the driver...other than in his pride and his pocketbook).

After the race we made our way to the car to so that we could watch the fireworks AND still beat the crowd.  I'm sure there were a number ground fireworks that we missed, but we did catch a lot still.  I tried to take some pictures, but I wasn't sure what setting to use, so they didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.