138th Shriners Imperial Session Parade

What a wonderful parade in Charlotte.
The Worldwide Shriners organizers were holding their annual convention in Charlotte this year and they were sponsoring a parade on July 4^th.
If you’re not familiar with the Shriners organizations, they are focused on raising funds for the their children’s hospitals around the world. We do not have a local Shriners hospital but we do have a local Shriners organization that was apparently playing host for this year’s festivities.
I never expected this parade to be so large but if they didn’t double an contingent’s enties up (two wide instead of one and 4 wide instead of 2) this parade would have gone on forever instead of lasting just over 2 hours.
I never expected the participation in the parade that was there. I figured you’d have a lot of regional entries. But I didn’t expect the entries from Chicago, South Dakota, Texas, Massachusettes and especially didn’t expect the participation of the shriners organization of my hometown of Reading, PA but they were all there. And not only these groups but you also had groups representing the Philippines, Panama, Puerto Rico and Canada.
There marchers of all sorts from just the organizational representation to clowns, marching bands, color guards and more. There was also every shape of go cart imaginable, every kind of funny car, horses, buses, trucks, and so much more.
These organizations should be praised for the work with children., Personally I wish they would come to Charlotte more often. This even gave me new appreciation for these organizations and I never realized how much involvement there was from the local Charlotte group, the Oasis Shrine.