may the fourth be with you

Happy Fourth! Last weekend were the Independence Day celebrations in Provo and John and I were able to participate!

The Saturday before the Fourth we took a walk over to the carnival/fair going on down Center Street. We looked at all of the booths and ended up stopping at one with people dressed up like Star Wars characters. John and I have known about this organization for a while. It's an club called the 501st Legion, and there are many branches of it around the world. There's a local chapter, the Alpine Garrison, and they were taking pictures at the fair with people for a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.

On the Alpine Garrison website, it describes what they do. "The group is a regional chapter of the 501st Legion, the premier Star Wars costuming group in the World. Membership is open to all. Members of the Alpine Garrison possess their own quality costumes and regularly donate their time for charity and promotional events." P.S. the 501st Legion is a club of all the "bad guys," or the characters part of the Empire, or characters who sympathize with the Empire. (For those who want to dress up like Jedis or run around with Princess Leia hair, there's a place for them, too.)

Yes... I'm a total nerd... so we chatted with the people there for a while, and told them we both have wanted to join for a while, but didn't have costumes. We were given some information about joining the club and getting costume help, and then were invited to help out at the parade! They had a float with all of the costumed characters, including Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidius, Darth Maul, Boba Fett, Jengo Fett, Grand Moff Tarkin, lots of Storm Troopers, TIE Pilots, Biker Scouts, Snow and Sand Troopers, and a few Jawas.

So we showed up Monday morning to see what we could do, and they put me at the very front holding the banner! John was a spotter, which means he walked around the float, making sure the characters were okay, bringing them water and anything else they needed. It was a long route- starting from Provo High, down University to 100 South, making a loop back to Center, and down Center St. to 900 East. When we were all done, we took some group pictures, I got to meet a lot of the members, and then we rode the float back to the start of the parade. We were definitely the most popular float (a lot of little kids got VERY excited about seeing Star Wars characters. Some started booing at us because we were the bad guys.) It was a really fun day!