Submitted by Danell Adams ~~

The Southern California Peruvian Paso Horse Club Parade team...pursuing a position in the 2010 Rose Parade...made their debut this year on March 7th at the 43rd annual Laguna Beach Patriots Day Parade. Riding into town with the Pacific Ocean in the background, all of the riders were adorned in newly designed satin red ponchos with matching hat bands.  The horses were decorated with matching neck ribbons and red and silver tinsel in the mane and on the tail piece under red, white and blue bows.  Our white neck scarves were set off with small red roses.  Needless to say, you could see us coming!

The Laguna Beach crowd was incredibly enthusiastic, applauding, thanking us, commenting on our beautiful horses and of course the age-old question: "What kind of horses are they?"  All of the riders were just as enthusiastic with lots of parade waves and answering questions as we proceeded down the route.

While we came down the route in three's, we popped into two barrida lines as we approached the Judge's stand.  We had lots of room to move at a good clip and as the pace increased, so did the applause, whistles and cheering from the crowd.  Just after passing the Judge's stand, we dropped into a single file line and made a u-turn back by the Judges stand. As we turned to pass the stand again, we moved back into our two barrida lines and flew by the Judges for the third time.  The noise of the crowd seemed to double!  It was over too quickly and everyone just wanted to do it again.  Another highlight of the day was winning the President's Theme Trophy!

On Saturday, March 21^st the team participated in the 51^st San Juan Fiesta of the Swallows Parade. This is considered to be the largest equestrian parade in the west! This was also a much longer day and a huge crowd of enthusiastic spectators.  At one point in the parade, we were asked to do a “trick” for the crowd.  Bonnie and Jorge were leading and split off into two directions followed by the rest of us.  We were in two, simultaneous circles moving at a good Paso Llano and the crowd went crazy!  There were 176 entries in this parade and we took first place in our division!  It was a great day and everyone was tired but had fun and look forward to our next team event: the Norco Spring Parade on April 18.

A special thanks to our team co-captain, Patty White and to my sister, Lori Hollis for her photography!

This year's team is: