4th of July Festivities

Ginger and I were sitting at home watching Rascal Flatts perform in Boston for the 4th of July concert and we just thought, what the heck are we doing? We're over here where so much of our countries history was first played out and we're sitting on our couch watching TV. Obviously our patriotism was in question and we had to head into Boston. It turns out we might have been better off just staying home.

We rode in on the subway and got off at the Charles River. It was packed when we got off and it took us awhile to get down to the park area. We had to weave in and out of crowds and climb over barricades and walk through fences and while we were hurdling over one of the roadside barriers, Ginger caught her pants (just purchased that day) on some steel wire and scratched her knee pretty good. She's a trooper though and we managed to walk down the river and find a spot that wasn't covered by trees and people.

When the fireworks finally started it was beautiful. The weather was perfect, we were sitting in a great spot with a great view, and the fireworks were awsome. Then we started to notice that the air was filling with smoke and wasn't clearing out and that was it for the view. We couldn't see a thing after that and for the next 15 minutes the sky was just full of smoke and it looked like downtown Boston was being bombed. It was fun regardless and we started to head back to the subway.

There was a huge crowd outside the entrance and all of a sudden there was some kind of fight that broke out and people started to scream and scatter away from the subway station. It looked like we were going to get trampled, so I'm trying to get Ginger and myself out of there and I start yelling at people to calm down before we get run over. I'm expecting to hear gunshots the way people are screaming and running. I'm still not sure what happened down there, but it turns out that someone in our ward heard that there were 5 shootings and 2 stabbings during this whole thing. I don't know how close we were to it all, but we managed to survive and make it back to our car.

We had to park up on the roof of the parking garage and so the traffic out of there was horrendous. We were at a stand still for a half an hour before I just shut off the car and waited it out. There was a guy up there that was roller skating and people were out of their cars playing music, looking over the edge, and just enjoying themselves. It was like a block party up there. Finally after another hour of just sitting on the roof, they opened up a side exit and we made it out. So that was our 4th of July and despite all the craziness and the disappointment of not seeing the fireworks like we wanted, we still had fun and had a good time.