This year's paraded of lights in downtown Grand Junction might have been the best one ever.

For starters, the weather was absolutely fantastic with the parade-time temperature around 42 degrees. Not bad at all for December. Over the years there have been plenty of Grand Junction Christmas parades when it was so cold large throngs of people would have to leave before the end. It didn't seem like many people were leaving early Saturday night.

The theme of this year's parade was A Comic Book Christmas, which offered a lot of different ways to illustrate Christmas with a comic twist. Without a doubt, superheroes were the most popular comic book characters to be features, and there were a lot of floats featuring our favorite blockhead Charlie Brown and World War I flying ace, Snoopy.

Parade attendance was estimated to be around 20,000, which was fantastic. Parade attendees might have been surprised when the parade was over in less than two hours. It seemed like the perfect amount of parade entries to give us a good parade, but not so many that you can hardly wait for it to be over.

Having plenty of marching band experience in my own history, I need to give a shout out to the marching bands that participated. I think marching bands make parades better. The bands from Grand Junction, Central, Palisade, and Fruita Monument participated and all three were terrific.

There were several food trucks and vendors up and down Main Street serving up some hot beverages and yummy treats which just helped make for a wonderful time downtown. I'm already looking forward to next year's parade.

Here's a look at this year's parade results. Congratulations to all the winners.

BUSINESS:
1st- The Spring Works
2nd - Whitewater Auto Recycling
3rd - Grand Junction Harley Davidson, BMW, KTM

ORGANIZATION:
1st - Juniper Ridge Community School
2nd - Rocky Mountain Downs Syndrome Association
3rd - Mesa County Libraries

PERFORMANCE:
1st - Palisade High School Marching Band
2nd - Dance Works
3rd - Fruita Monument High School Marching Band

YOUTH:
1st- Cub Scout Pack 353
2nd- Boy Scout Troop 318
3rd - Colorado Cinderella Scholarship Program

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