Bucket List! 2024 Rose Bowl Game and Parade

I was born and grew up in the city of Columbus, Ohio, home of The Ohio State University. My uncle and cousins were in the band there (The Best Damn Band in the Land), my grandparents lived down the street, my dad's high school was on campus, my cousin worked there and I even attended there one summer. To say that I have scarlet and gray in my blood would be an understatement. When I was growing up, New Years Day meant two things: watching the Rose Bowl Parade on tv in the morning and then watching the winner of the Big 10 conference play the winner of the Pac 10 conference play in the Rose Bowl.

Orange tree in the neighborhood we walked through to get to the parade

(For those of you not familiar with the Rose Bowl, it is an American football "bowl" game, meaning championship, at a stadium located in Pasadena, California, on New Years Day evening. The Parade of Roses is a spectacular parade in the morning of New Years Day with marching bands and floats made of thousands if roses)

The neighborhood where the parade is held - beautiful area

Queen of Roses float

 Things are quite different now with a whole new playoff system and the dismantling of some of the conferences - and the adding of teams to some that are already established - but the Rose Bowl is still "the granddaddy of them all." When the Buckeyes won a spot to play the Oregon Ducks there last January - and the fact that we now lived closer to California than we ever had - we decided to see if we could tick this experience off of our bucket list. I'm pleased to say that Mr. UR made it happen - he found tickets for the game, and then booked some flights. Using hotel points for our very short 2 night stay, we were Rose Bowl bound!

Orange trees in Pasadena

Christmas in Pasadena

The Rose Bowl Parade -

Grand Marshal was the tennis sensation, Billie Jean King (and her car broke down right in front of where we were standing) and the floats were amazing. You could even smell all the flowers! It helped that the weather was fantastic - sunny and 72 degrees but I kept telling Mr. UR that this was one of the best - if not the best - parades I had ever been to. I highly recommend attending if you're in the area.

Bille Jean's car breaking down

The Rose Bowl Football Game 

We parked about a mile away and walked to the stadium - and I'm so glad we did after seeing the traffic trying to get into the parking lot. There were lots of tailgaters and a bit of a line to get into the stadium. Our seats were great and had a beautiful view of the Southern California mountains. The game was a blast as our Ohio State Buckeyes won - it's always fun when you win - and were the 2025 Rose Bowl Champs!

Military flyover

I'm so glad that we made the hasty decision to attend the Rose Bowl. It was a fabulous bucket list experience! As the saying goes: Life is Short - Book the Trip, Buy the shoes, Eat the cake! You won't regret it

This will be the last blog post for 2025 and I'll be back at it in January. Both my daughters are coming home - from New York and Sydney and Mr. UR and I will be celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary. So lots of fun and family time coming up!