St. Patrick's Day Parade 2011 - San Diego

On Saturday I joined the local photo club for our monthly group get together, this time it was the 31st annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in San Diego. They say it is the largest parade in the US west of the Mississippi.


The firefighters lead off.

After the firefighters came the Marines.

I shot almost the entire parade with a fairly long lens (300mm) so many of my images are close-ups of the people. The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick were out in force. I had no idea there were so many of them. I wanted to ask if there was also a group called the Unfriendly Sons of St. Patrick, but everyone seemed to be having such a good time I didn't want to bring up a potentially sore subject.

Lots of Irish dancers.

Lots of Irish Setters.

And a whole lot of interesting characters, although I'm not quite sure what some of them had to do with St. Patrick or Irish culture. But, it's a parade, everyone was having fun, and that's all that mattered.

One of the two Irishwomen of the Year, she sure was having a good time.

In fact, everyone was having a great time. The weather was perfect, you couldn't ask for a better day in San Diego.

Click here to see more images from Saturday, March 12, 2011, at the San Diego St. Patrick's Day Parade.