Fall Fun

That's right! The Greatest Free Show on earth!

Last week Tristan heard from a fellow classmate about some pumpkin festival going on, after a brief search we located the show. We thought it sounded like fun and the forecast predicted fairly decent weather so we packed up the car and grabbed some friends to drive down to Circleville. After punching the address into the GPS we drove down without event. . . until we got about a mile away from the exit. It took about 30 minutes to drive that last mile due to traffic. Amazing. This little town was packed with cars. They were parking on the grass right off the off-ramp and walking to the festival. We did a drive by then began searching for a parking spot. We drove down street after street of golden leafed trees hunting for an opening. After passing a dozen or so signs "Parking $10" we finally we located a free slot on the side of the road. We got all set up with Kalia in the front pack and headed to see the excitement. We were amused to see "Shifty's bar" and the adjoining "parkin" sign. There were street vendors everywhere. Our friends that'd come with us purchased an elephant's ear (scone covered with cinnamon and sugar) to share. We walked through crowded streets passing vendor after vendor advertising pumpkin this and pumpkin that. We particularly liked the pumpkin sauce with the corn dog (though we didn't actually try it). It sounded particularly peculiar.

We did sample some tasty pumpkin donuts. We had to stop and take a picture with the record breaking biggest pumpkin weighing in at more than 1600 pounds. The pumpkin is wearing the crown, not me. :)

We'd only been walking around for about an hour, but due to some rainy snowish stuff we were pretty cold. We headed to the nearest Bob Evens for some hot cocoa to warm up a bit. On the way there we discovered a back street about a mile or so beyond the freeway exit where the freeway turns into a highway that could have saved us those 30 minutes. I guess that's what happens in an unfamiliar area. It was an exciting experience, that's for sure. Maybe we'll go back next year and it'll be a bit sunnier.