Rain spoiled the first part of Saturday for outdoors activities but cleared up by the afternoon in time to leave the rest of the weekend ...
... well, gray, overcast and with that damp autumn chill that gets into your bones and makes even the outdoorsiest of us prefer to curl up under a blanket and behind a book. But it was Halloween weekend, the kids already had their costumes and the grownups had been planning Trick or Treat Alley for months. So the event went forward and the crowds were impressive.
Trick or Treat Alley is cosponsored by the Dade County Public Library and the Dade Chamber of Commerce. They, and the merchants, civic groups and service providers around town sponsoring booths had put hundreds of hours into decorating, coordinating, costuming and amassing chocolate, so were not fixin' to let a little bone-chilling weather ruin Halloween.
Roads leading into the square had been cordoned off with hay bales to make it safe for the parade of costumed pedestrians. Trick-or-treating opportunities were ranged all around the Trenton town square, courtesy of Dade businesses and service providers that manned candy stations.
The Dade Chamber of Commerce will announce prizes for its children's scarecrow costume and best-dressed booth contests later today on its anointed news outlet, the local television station. But small online newspapers are in any case allowed to snap photographs, so here are a couple featuring the splashier candy passer-outers.
The Dade Public Library had transformed itself this year not into a haunted house but into Alice's Wonderland. Below, library manager Marshana Sharp as the
White Rabbit welcomes guests inside.
All the favorite Wonderland characters were in evidence at the library Saturday night, including the Red Queen, Mad Hatter and Alice herself. There may even have been some mome raths outgribing in corners here and there but it was pretty dark in there among the borogroves and there's only so much The Planet can do with night photography.
How fortunate, then, for the sharp eye and capable camera of talented local shutterbug Alex McAlpin, who generously shared the shots below he took of the apres-nightfall part of Saturday's festivities. The Chamber of Commerce also sponsors each Halloween a paid event, the Zombie Walk, with additional fees for a makeup booth. In the Zombie Walk, participants parade from the square down Highway 11 in a Walking Dade apocalypse. Thanks for the great shots, Alex!
(Photos by Alex McAlpin: Kristen McAlpin is decked out in UnDead Chic at top and Kyle Westmoreland at bottom impersonates a young Pennywise.)
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