Saturday we decided to take the kids to experience the jonny appleseed festival. Actually we just went because my mom was working a booth and asked us to stop by. Now amazingly I have never been to this festival in my life. Somehow I actually got out of going to this festival in my 7 years of working in radio, going everywhere from Farm focus in Van Wert to the flat rock creek fall festival in BFE. I have heard over the years that it is a pretty nice festival with good food and crafts for sale in tents. Now I am not a knick-knack or "country decor" kinda person, but Jenny is, or at least she was until we were married. But hey, Jen might like it and I know my mom would love to see the kids...
The festival is at the coliseum... kinda. The memorial coliseum is a huge indoor complex that can house concerts and other huge events including home and garden show and the like, but this festival is in the grassy area on the other side of the parking lot from the coliseum (close to the gravesite of Jonny Appleseed). They try to keep the event with a certain "period" feel with tents instead of booths, and all the vendors wearing "period" or close to "period" clothing. So the feel is that you are walking back in the the 1800's. So I knew that the festival was in the grassy area outside of the parking lot, what I found out is that the festival is spread out over a 4 square mile area, not in the flat area, but in a very hilly area with narrow passageways to different areas that hold anywhere from 6 to 30 tents. There are little areas of tents around these trees, and those trees. It was like a treasure hunt trying to find where the tent was my mom was working. We finally found a map at the information tent and after a few minutes of trying to figure out where we were we finally saw her tent. Trying to get there was a major pain in the ass, in a mass of humanity on narrow passageways, pushing a stoller, up and down hills in deep grass, sometimes carrying william in 80 degree weather... am I having fun yet? We get to the tent a few minutes after the time she was supposed to leave and of course she was gone. Damn. We found out later that she actually left alot earlier since she wasn't feeling that well. Maybe we should have told her we were coming, but we wanted to surprise her. So we tried to make the best of it walking around looking at the crafts and food tents trying to decide what to eat. We were going to buy food from mom's tent, but the line was too long. On another note, It just amazes me how stupid people are in walking around these festivals. It's bad enough trying to push a stroller through a crowd, but these idiots just stop in the middle of the crowd to look around, or they will walk backward looking at whatever and not paying attention to where they are going. I almost saw a fight right in front of me where this guy ran into anther guy because he wasn't paying attention. But hey we survived, we didn't buy anything crafty, but did end up spending almost $15 on crappy food that wasn't even filling. $2 popcorn, $4 funnel cake (they had funnel cake in the 1800's?) $5 bottle of root beer, $4 apple dumpling. Of course Jen and I got little to none of this food with the two human vacuum cleaners with us. Finally after 2 hours of walking around and fighting the crowd we decided to call it a day and made it back to the car. I seriously doubt that I will ever go back to this festival, or if I do it won't be until both kids can walk on their own the whole time. There were some cool parts to the festival. They had some neat reenactments, and a couple of drum and bugle corps bands that were fun to see and William seemed to enjoy that, so maybe, for the kids, I will go back again. There were some people from the "God squad" on the sidewalk giving away free bibles. I almost got one just to say I got something free from the festival.
1 comment:
Did you get to the children's section? There, while busy, is a neat little section by the river for the kids to play -- some free, events. There are some rarer foods there like old-fashioned pork rinds (I wouldn't eat them, but some people do), bison burgers (yes, with real bison), etc. The food is a bit overpriced, but the "settler" and "pioneer" folks are making that stuff from scratch. The outlining areas have produce and other things in jars -- months old but preserved. In all, the festival is the smell, the sounds of the bagpipes, the look of the tents -- and the testiment to emptying the wallet.
I agree heartily that there is such a mass of humanity, there should be a check station for communicable diseases before entry. One sick person can literally infect hundreds, then those infect yet more. I hope that your only sickness was hunger!
Post a Comment