We interrupt the usual delayed timeline to bring you these unusually timely photos.  Happy Fourth of July!

The Dexter area’s tranquility was shattered last night by the always well-attended fireworks show at Hudson Mills Metropark.

I’d never been inside the park for the fireworks, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I got an idea, though, when I was told to show up at 6pm if I wanted a decent parking spot inside the park.  (The fireworks start at 10pm.)  This turned out to be excellent advice.

What do you do when you’re going to wait four hours for a fireworks show?  You bring comfortable chairs and tasty food, and you enjoy the park’s amenities.

Hudson Mills includes an excellent playground.

One of the sand volleyball courts didn’t have a net, so a number of kids repurposed it as a very large sandbox.

Some kids took the opportunity to declare their independence from instructions and rules.

(Actually, as far as I could tell, that hill wasn’t actually off-limits until the fireworks started: the launch site was just a bit beyond those trees.  But the photo opportunity was too good to refuse.)

The Bearclaw Coffee van did an extraordinarily brisk business.  The line you see here was as short as it got.

For those inclined to lose a little bit of hearing, there was live music.

A number of vendors were selling various light-up trinkets like necklaces, swords and mohawks.  They weren’t too interesting in the daylight, but when the sun went down, they became a prime target for a strange-looking long exposure photo.

Finally, the fireworks started.  Hudson Mills puts on a great show.

The finale was crazy enough to give me slightly overexposed photos…

But that also provided a look at the smoke produced by all those launches.