Missoula’s Parade of Lights Will Be Different This Year

As we get closer to the holidays, we'll start to hear more about some of Missoula's favorite events, and how exactly they're going to work in 2020. Some stuff will be altered, some stuff will be able to go on as planned, and others will unfortunately have to be postponed until next year (we saw this happen for Halloween with a few places around town, including the Missoula Maze).

And one of Missoula's biggest holiday events is the annual Parade of Lights, where cars and floats drive along Higgins with thousands gathered to watch, leading up to the big tree lighting. It's a ton of fun, and it's also something that seemed pretty impossible to do in the age of COVID.

But luckily, the Parade of Lights is still happening! Just, in a different way than it usually does.

Downtown Missoula is calling it the first-ever "Reverse" Parade of Lights, and it's actually a really good idea. Instead of cars and floats driving by, they'll actually all be stationed on Campus Drive at UM Campus, where families can get in their own cars and drive through to see all the sights.

Pretty awesome, right? It seems like an innovative way to still give Missoula a version of their holiday fun - I'm sure it'll return to a normal Parade of Lights as soon as it's safe to do so (hopefully in 2021, fingers crossed), but this is a great way to keep the tradition alive.

Will you be checking out the "Reverse" Parade of Lights?