Sitting on the wood-plank flatbed of a restored 1939 Ford pickup in downtown Redmond, 25-year-old Crystal Holcomb said her day started with ice cream.

”We all run to Dairy Queen and have ice cream for breakfast and watch the parade together,” the Bend resident said. ”It’s a family thing.”

Holcomb perched on the bed of the truck with her family Saturday morning while others set up camp chairs along the flag-lined sidewalk to watch the annual Des-chutes County Fair Parade march down Sixth Street.

The parade featured rodeo queens from around Eastern Oregon, muscle cars, BMX bikers and a live band. Many groups in the parade wore pink ears and curly pipe-cleaner tails in honor of the ”Swine and Roses” fair theme.

Holcomb said the parade, which kicks off the fourth day of the county fair, is the only one the entire family attends.

She said she liked the small-town feel of it and said it was a good way to support children involved in 4-H and recognize the accomplishments of the rodeo queens.

Several candidates running in the November election also worked the crowd, many adding to the shower of candy thrown to spectators.

By the end of the parade, candy brimmed from both cup holders in 9-year-old Luci Charlton’s camp chair.

”Everyone should come to the parade,” she said. ”It’s so cool.”

She attended the event with her grandmother, 60-year-old Jeannie Branin.

Branin, who lives in Bend, said she grew up going to the Redmond event.

”I think it’s just the epitome of small-town communities,” she said. ”My favorite part of the parade is just meeting old friends, people you haven’t seen for 10, 20 years.”

Branin said she always ends up watching the event from the same spot, near the corner of Sixth Street and Deschutes Avenue.

Shirley Carter, 70, sitting nearby, said she liked seeing the marching band and watching children and youths participate in the parade. She said she was impressed by the BMX biking group that rode past, popping wheelies – a group she hadn’t seen in past years.

”I enjoy it,” she said of the event. ”I think the parade brings families out, and we need more family activities that all can participate in.”

Hood River couples Dyrk and Sally Pritchett and Jon and Debra Laraway were vacationing at Eagle Crest Resort without their children, but said the parade compared favorably to other parades in Hood River.

”I like how the rodeo’s mixed in,” Dyrk Pritchett, 49, said. ”It’s more of the traditional Eastern Oregon (influence).”

Debra Laraway, 51, said, ”It’s a little bit of America that’s left.”