Stephen's Story
Day 9
Today is the 4th of July and we did not get up early to do any riding. We all took showers and got dressed for the 4th of July parade. It was very fun and we had the whole gang there. There were people shooting the crowd with squirt guns and people throwing out candy. There were people shooting their guns with blanks of course. Which caught us all off guard because the parades that we normally watch don’t do that, but this is such a small town they can do that without any repercussions. There were fighter jets that flew over our heads right before the parade that was so cool. The jets flew so close to the ground that we thought they would barely dodge the trees on the mountain that's outside of town. That is one of the coolest parts of this town is that there are mountains surrounding you and that are so close. This town was built in the valley in the middle of all of the mountains.
Then we went back to the RV park and did some swimming in the freezing cold river. This river was like 35-40 degrees not actually a freezing temperature but really close to it. Mathew, Kyle, and TJ also went tubing down the river. The only bad part about tubing was that where we were set up the river was pretty calm so it wasn’t very exciting. Then we decided to have a corn hole tournament which never really happened but we did play a lot of corn hole. BTW our tournament consists of picking partners randomly out of a hat, then everyone pitched in like 5 dollars to make the winning prize money. Like I said that never happened, it ended up being couples/siblings against another couple/siblings. Which was actually pretty fun because they all call mom Mr. Campbell so Mom and I played a couple of games together. I would have played with Kyle but he is not the same skill level so it would not have been very fair. I have gotten really good at cornhole and even beat some of the people that my dad couldn’t even beat before on other camping trips. That is how we ended our day.
Amber's Story
July 4, 2021 – Sunday
Today is the Fourth of July! One of my favorite holidays. We woke up, got all dressed up, decorated our camp (not as much as I planned) and our bikes and geared up for the Silverton parade. Kyle decided he wanted to enter the parade so he wore his red, white and blue fedora, decorated his bike and rode into town and lined up behind the Silverton Lakes RV Resort vehicle. He planned to wheelie on his bike the entire way but unfortunately the parade moved so slowly he just waved to everyone lining the two main streets of this tiny town. There are only 600 residents in Silverton but there were a lot more than that lining the parade route. It was not seeing the out of towners infusing the town with so much $$$.
We had a great time. There were 38 of us in our group and we were all decked out in our patriotic best. Most of us rode our bikes into town and we rode down the middle of the main street to find an open spot. As we rode, people were cheering. The parade began with a flyover of Airforce fighter jets. That was a totally unexpected surprise that was fantastic! Almost all of the participants in the parade threw candy and beads and the fire fighters and several others were spraying us with water as they slowly crept by. We contemplated being in the parade but we also wanted to watch it. A good time was had by all.
After the parade we all hung out together at camp for the rest of the day. We had a bloody mary and mimosa bar, we had a nacho bar for lunch and then we rode our bikes into town to do a little shopping. After that we spent a little time down by the river, we had several cornhole games and we ate more food than any people should eat. Tonight’s feast was hotdogs and hamburgers with so many delicious sides. The sun has been setting around 9:00pm and with no fires allowed it gets cold after the sun goes down so everyone headed to their trailers around 10:00. Unfortunately, because of the stage one fire ban there were no fireworks this year. It might be the first year ever that we didn’t even have sparklers on the fourth.