There were trophies and ribbons awarded and we learned that there are perfectly round lemons, and grapefruit that are bright orange on the inside. There were also huge pomelo (that weigh around 3 pounds each) and awards given for the freakiest fruit.
But the thing that brings thousands to downtown Mission is the Citrus Festival parade. We were there almost an hour early in order to find a space for our chairs. Considering that the 3:00 parade started 45 minutes late, we had eaten a lot of that huge bag of kettle corn by the time we saw the first float.
The parade would be almost two hours long, and we found out that the area high schools have very large bands that were quite good. We also found one tiny band that got to ride instead of march down the parade route.
We discovered that the area cities in the Rio Grande Valley had each selected a teenage girl to compete for the Queen of Citrianna and her Royal Court.
All the local royalty were dressed in appropriately colored dresses, and each rode in a convertible with their young escort. The picture is of the Duchess of Pink Grapefruit. But as expected in a citrus parade we also saw Duchesses of Orange, Marshwhite Grapefruit, Tangerine, and Ruby Red Grapefruit. Before the two hour parade was over, we also saw the Duchesses of Honeydew, Bluebonnet, Cactus Blossom, Delta Waters, Live Oak, Butterfly, Wildflowers . .
But the highlight of the parade must be the floats decorated with citrus fruit.
The parade theme was "Old Time Rock 'n Roll" and these floats looked good enough to eat! Just like the Rose Bowl Parade, most of the decorating must be done at the last minute. Besides the obvious citrus fruits, we also found that they used leaves and things like onion seeds to attain different colors. The following is a sample of some of our favorite floats:
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