Thanksgiving floats taking shape for Sun Bowl Parade

This year’s Thanksgiving Sun Bowl Parade will feature a theme of American folklore.

“The float team alone started working in July to build three giant floats for the parade,” said the Sun Bowl Association’s Joe Daubach.

The biggest is this one, a WWII plane leading a bald eagle in attack, and it’ll have veterans from the second war sitting as they’re honored this Thanksgiving.
More than 700 volunteers come together each year, all working for the 250 thousand people who turn up.

You’re going to be seeing a lot of red, white and blue this Thanksgiving, like a giant Betsy Ross float for the Sun Court, and other builders are taking their favorite tales of American folklore and bringing them to life.

“We feel like, a little bit like Johnny Appleseed. He was running around the world, planting seeds, giving fruit for other people to enjoy it,” explained Ramona Garcia, with the Lifesavers Transplant Support Group.

As floats show off Thanksgiving icons and Native American imagery, volunteers are making sure these floats hidden away in a warehouse are ready to brighten El Paso’s Thanksgiving morning.

“To see the look on people’s faces as it goes down, and the smiles on the kids, it makes every bit of the work we put into it worth it,” said head mechanic, Jerry Stephenson

This year El Pasoans can’t leave any chairs, tents or grills alone on the street the night before.
If you’re not there to claim them as police patrol they will be taken down.