Roughly translated from Inupiaq, the song that an Alaska Eskimo dance group wrote to perform Tuesday for the country's new president goes something like this:

"Obama, Obama, we come to see you, we come to see you from a very long ways."

The more-than-20-member group, called the Suurimmaanitchuat Dancers, hails from Barrow -- a long way from Washington indeed.

But when the dancers found themselves within 20 feet of Barack Obama along the D.C. parade route, they were so excited it was tough to remember the new song, created just days ago by an elder member.

"I don't know what I was singing," dancer Rex Okakok joked in a light-hearted phone interview at the tail end of a day that began at 1 a.m. Alaska time.

"I was just pointing my finger at Obama and ... waving at him and throwing kisses and all that kind of stuff."

The president smiled and waved back -- to the Barrow dancers, and to another group of Alaskans asked to join the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and to celebrate the first hours of the Obama presidency.

The Colony High School marching band played Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Travelin' Band" as they approached the president.

After hours of waiting and security screenings, including a long delay before the parade began, junior Hannah Murdoch's drum had grown heavy. At least until that final stretch where Obama and his family watched from a reviewing stand beside the street.

"We (had) walked for about a mile and a half already and turned a corner into a street with huge bright lights. I remember looking over at the snare drummers and saying, 'This is it, guys, this is what we've been waiting for,'" Murdoch said.

"He waved right at us and all of our faces lit up."

When it wasn't playing Creedence, the Colony band performed its take on Michael Jackson's "Thriller." On the sidelines, where vendors hawked Obama buttons and posters, sweatshirts and dog tags, a few teenage girls did the famous "zombie" dance made popular by the song's vintage music video. Others sang along.

Gayle Hoyt, a Colony senior who plays the alto saxophone, said the band also knows Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and "American Woman" by The Guess Who, but figured those wouldn't do for an inaugural parade.

"It seemed in poor taste to play protest songs at a government event," he said.

The Colony kids are the state's only active high school marching band and come from Palmer -- not far from Gov. Sarah Palin's home turf of Wasilla.

But if the former vice presidential candidate's name came up along the parade route Tuesday, Okakok never heard it.

"We didn't hear anybody talk about her at all," he said.

He did meet, and dance with, a group of North Pole residents in town for the celebrations. The dance group rode on a blue float decorated with giant Alaska flags, passing Obama at about 1:30 p.m. Alaska time.

While there wasn't much room for both dancing and drumming, Okakok said it was an honor to perform.

The group has danced in D.C. before, at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, but this was something different.

"This is my first time ever doing something like that. It was exciting to me," he said.

"It was a history-making event, and we are part of that history."