The Florida native, who goes by Lizwizdom on social media, shared a video of her enjoying the parade from her car during the annual Rossnowlagh parade in the Co Donegal seaside village at the weekend.
The woman explained she had been travelling around the island after having been enjoying Taylor Swift’s Dublin concerts last week.
Since posting it on Sunday, the video – captioned “when you’re just trying to take a shortcut on your Irish road trip but you end up in the middle of an Irish parade – has since been viewed 1.3m times.
The annual parade takes place on the Saturday before the Twelfth, with more than 60 Orange lodges participating.
The bands usually travel down the main lane of the village before ending on a road near the beach.
Explaining the situation in a separate video, the 30-year-old said: “Here’s how I ended up in the middle of an Orange Order parade that I mistakenly thought was just an Irish celebration.
“I’d started the morning outside of Sligo viewing the Gleniff Horseshoe which is gorgeous. Ireland is on another level with these mountains and these views.
“But they are also on another level with their narrow roads so our GPS led us down one and straight into a parade route.
“There were hundreds of coach buses and absolutely nowhere to go. My dad was not happy that we ended up parked in the middle of the road for 40 minutes.
“I thought well lets just make the best of it and enjoy the parade from the car not knowing what the context was.
“I saw a lot of orange but I just thought you know America has red, white and blue, Ireland has green, white and orange. Turns out there’s a lot more to it than that.
“When traffic started moving we asked the policeman how to get out of here and he started laughing at us and now I understand why. But we did make it to our next destination Slieve League.”
Responding to a viewer on TiKTok who replied to the 30-year-old woman, she added: “I didn’t know that this was a controversial thing. I thought I just stumbled upon a parade out in the Irish countryside, turns out major politically divisive situation going on.
“How was I to know? For context, I am an American who was in Dublin for the Eras Tour.”
