For those of you who are from the South, nothing in this blog entry will appear odd to you. However, for those of you who are unfortunate enough to have not attended a southern festival/ fair, this may be interesting. Trip and I met up with my parents to attend the Richmond Hill Seafood Festival yesterday. None of us had gone before and we were quite impressed with the size of the thing. They had tons of booths, seafood, music and a full fledged carnival section, complete with carnies challenging your manhood, rides that look like they hadn't had maintenance in some odd number of years, more greasy foods than one country should have in one location (on account of safety), and lots of G-R-E-A-T people watching. If I saw one set of fake "pups" (as my boss, and now husband, calls them), I saw about twenty sets barely clinging on to dear life under leather vests.
This is mom getting a lesson on how to eat a crawfish properly.
Here are some shots of the rides.
Something else I realized, although I am sure I already knew, was how expensive a fair can be. My dad insisted on giving Trip and me each $20.00 for food. We blew through that and another $20.00! It isn't like we were eating gourmet lobster tail with truffle oil. We were eating grouper fingers, fried oysters, boiled peanuts, and the like. I mean, really. But having said that, it was all damn good. A little too damn good, as I went home doubled over in pain from the indulgence. Perhaps part of my problem stemmed from the fact that I ate some (not all- that would have been wrong) of a funnel cake. And although I had heard about deep fried twinkies, candy bars and Oreos, I never thought I would see them in person.
As revolting as they seem, curiosity almost got the best of me. I love Oreos and I am tolerant of deep frying. How can you go wrong? But I opted for the funnel cake. I asked Queen Deep Fry (seen above) whether they had these little heart attacks up north and she claimed that they did. I don't know about that. Anyway, one thing I would bet they don't have up there is "gator tail." I passed on this treat, but have had it before and it actually isn't half bad.
I love the homemade sign of the Bulldog and the Florida Gator. Nice.
Anyway, it was a good time and certainly a change from regular routine. Tonight we plan on hitting up the Greek Festival which, I suspect, might be a little different . . . uh, atmosphere.
