This is the fall festival season in Texas. The weather is finally cool enough to enjoy being outside for long periods of time without either immersing yourself in a lake or downing a bucket of margaritas. So my wife and I expanded the whisking away game that I mentioned in an earlier post to include trips to local (well, at least within a day trip) fairs and festivals.
One of the things that we like about festivals is that they often don't charge an entrance fee, or if they do, it is pretty small. One that we went to recently in Austin was the Gypsy Picnic which celebrated Austin's trailer food trend. The mobile food vendor thing has caught on pretty big in Texas, at least in the Austin area. We aren't talking about “roach coaches” here, but basically entrepreneurs who sell a variety of food from trailers or motor coaches that either move around to where the customers are or hang out in parking lots and other places where they can put out some picnic tables and sell their wares. For the Gypsy Picnic about 30 or 40 vendors set up shop at a local outdoor events venue. Each of them had at least one sample of one their food specialties for $3 so you could try samples from a variety of vendors for a small amount of money. There was no charge for the festival itself and it included free live music all day. My wife and I went to the Gypsy Picnic partly to sample goodies from some food trailers that we had never been to, partly to hear free live music and partly just to watch people, because that's one of the things we enjoy and festivals are a great place to do that. In our area, at least, festivals bring out a cast of colorful characters who are interesting to watch and to talk with. That's half the fun for us. We had a great time at the Gypsy Picnic, ate some good food, heard some live music and met some interesting folks and the whole thing, including parking downtown, probably cost us less than $40.
Recently I whisked my old girl away to the Texas Renaissance Festival near Plantersville, Texas. The Texas Renaissance Festival is sort of an ongoing medieval fair that is held at a permanent festival ground and runs weekends from early October through the end of November. The general theme, as the name implies, is the renaissance period but each weekend has sort of a mini-theme. There is an Oktoberfest weekend, a Pirate Adventure weekend and a Highland Fling weekend to name a few. The festival staff, vendors and performers all dress in medieval or fantasy garb and role-play characters from that era or from the mini-theme of that particular weekend. My wife and I have been to somewhat similar venues where the attraction consists mostly of jousting and a meal and costs about $65 per person. The Texas Renaissance Festival tickets are much less expensive (advance tickets are only $16 per person) and you get much more for the money.
The festival includes the jousting and horseback games you might expect to find but also there are between 15 and 20 stages where shows are constantly playing and all of them that we attended were included in the ticket price. There are musicians, dancers, puppeteers, comedians, a birds of prey show and many more. The festival grounds are huge and include a couple of hundred shops and eating and drinking establishments. These all cost extra, of course, and frankly the prices are pretty high, but the variety is mind-boggling.
As I mentioned above, my wife and I love to people-watch and I can't think of a better place to do it than at the Texas Renaissance Festival. Not only do the staff, vendors and performers dress the part, but many, if not most, of the patrons do as well. We had some interesting and usually tasty food at the festival, heard some live music, saw some shows and lots of characters. This was a little more expensive than the Gypsy Picnic, but well worth the money. I know that there are similar venues throughout the country, perhaps not quite as colorful as the Texas Renaissance Festival, but they are great places to have a fun day for a reasonable price.
Some other places we have whisked each other away to this fall have included the state and county fairs. The state fair, at least here in Texas, is a bit pricey and while we enjoyed it, we like the little county fairs better. They tend to have relatively inexpensive entrance and parking fees and you can usually park fairly close to an entrance. We enjoy seeing the animals, produce, canned goods and craft items, often produced by 4H kids. There are usually some shows at fairs as well and, of course, lots of fair food. OK, a deep fried Twinkie or chicken-fried bacon isn't on a heart-healthy diet, but it's all balance, right?
Some of our friends consider these kinds of events to be intended for younger people and they don't like to attend them, but my old girl and I feel as though you will never feel better than you do today so there is no time better than now to get out and enjoy life. You don't have to spend a lot of money to do it either.
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