Apple Festival

On Sunday we traveled to Bayfield for the Apple Festival.  We love the apple festival every year, and this year was one of our favorites yet.  To get there we actually had to take two cars, since our van was in the fix-it shop.  (The last several times we’ve had our van serviced the mechanics have made some major mistake that leads to the van breaking down and them having to fix it free for us . . . at least the fixing is free, even though it’s inconvenient).  We looked at all the arts and crafts displayed in the craft fair area.  We wandered up and down the crowded blocked off streets.  We ate lots of interesting food.  We watched lots of interesting people.  I bought some really neat fleece winter hats for Mr. Trouble on Two Feet and a special secret surprise treat that I’m mailing to my sister-in-law Jennifer tomorrow.  Grandma Kathy found some great apple souvenirs and treats to take back to North Dakota with her.

For lunch everyone except me had apple brats.   Numerous carmel apples were purchased and cut and shared between the group.  I’m not much for brats, and I don’t really like carmel apples all that well, so instead I had a piece of apple pie with ice cream.  It was the perfect treat for a brilliant autumn afternoon.  

I couldn’t resist purchasing another bag of honeycrisp apples, and I ate one of those for a snack.  Mr. Trouble on Feet was quite impressed with the honeycrisp apples as well.  While we watched the parade he ate no less than four apples.  I didn’t realize he could reach in the bag, and at one point I looked down and he had an apple in each hand and a spare tucked in the stroller seat next to him.  Chewing on the apples kept him very busy and happy, and a happy toddler makes for a happy Mama.

The parade is always one of our favorite parts of Apple Fest.  It’s such a unique parade, with ambulances, fire trucks, enormous coast guard rescue boats on trailers.  There are apple dancers, apple royalty, and just a little bit of everything apple and not apple, including sailboats, ski-resort floats that throw snow at spectators, a few pirates . . .

But of course my very favorite thing about the apple festival parade is the large collection of marching bands.  I just love those marching bands from all sorts of different sized towns and schools.  I love the little marching bands with the tiny kids that are so short they can hardly hold up their instruments and march at the same time, and I know they’re in the marching band because their teacher needed them to be!  I LOVE that because it reminds me of home.  I love the distinguished marching bands with their professional teachers who do all sorts of fancy footwork.  I love the pipe and drum band from Thunder Bay.  It’s just great.  The first ten marching bands each year make me just tear up.  They just evoke a very emotional response in me!  I can’t help it.  Tears just stream down my face and I have so much respect for their teachers and so many band-related memories that just bubble up to the surface, and I just want to jump back in the music classroom.  My family giggles at me every year.

Anyway, here are some quick snapshots of a couple of my favorite parade moments:

This car is a mainstay of the parade each year.  The Banana would really like to ride up in the bathtub on top.  It’s totally a Banana car, don’t you agree?  Although it really is it’s own amazing phenomenon, there is just something about this car that reminds me of Henry Leuhr (a character from my childhood in my home town) and his special batmobile car that he drove in all the area parades.  I loved seeing that batmobile in the parades of my childhood.  Something tells me Henry Leuhr and the artist behind this car would have a lot to talk about.  Henry loved to decorate things with items he scavenged from the town dump.

I loved that the marching band from Grand Marais (a long trip around the corner of the lake to get to Bayfield) included their bass guitarist, and recruited someone in the last line to pull a generator behind the band so his bass line could be heard by all.

I loved this sign in front of the marching band from Rib Lake, Wisconsin.  Rib Lake is a tiny town a bit north of where we used to live in Marshfield.  Almost everyone in the school is in the band, and they are dedicated!  They are good!  They are really fun to watch.  They take a ton of pride in their music program, and you understand this the minute you see them.  PLUS all the band members and all of their supporters:  parents, siblings and band fans all wear T-shirts with their school colors that say “I’m with the Band.”  I LOVE it.  Their band is very impressive.

I loved this group of people with physical and mental disabilities that traveled the whole parade route decorating the street in their own special way with sidewalk chalk.  Some members pushed sidewalk chalk next to their chairs or pushed a contraption kind of like a rake or stroller that colored the street, and some drew pictures with chalk in their hands as they walked.  They handed out chalk to kids along the parade route so they could make their own art too.  All of the artists were all part of a group that advocates art education for all people of all abilities.  I thought it was incredibly neat.