In mid-October we drove up to Keene, New Hampshire to see the Pumpkin Festival. I can't explain to you how excited I was about this. I just get really amped about a LOT of something all in one place. In 2013, the festival broke the Guinness World Record with over 30,000 lit jack-o-lanterns, and they were hoping for a repeat this year.
Normally Keene is a really small little town (population around 20k), so having about 4 times that many people crammed in their little town square is a site to behold in itself.
The highlight of the day for Mariah was riding in a school bus from the parking lot to the festival. My highlight was seeing all the pumpkin headgear and costumes.
There were so many thousands and thousands of pumpkins lining the streets it's hard to really capture it, but there were some really fun carvings, like Botticelli's Venus in pumpkin form.
We went there with the Giffords; here we are escaping the crowds for dinner on a side street.
Around dusk, people starting lighting their pumpkins. It took a few hours just to get everything lit. There were official counters going around, marking X's on the pumpkins as they were counted.
There were live bands playing in the pavillion and everyone was really into it. It actually made me kind of love Halloween for a day. The whole thing totally reminded me of Punxsutawny in the movie Groundhog Day.
(And, in case you were worried about pumpkin waste, they actually have a team contest right after the festival for cleaning up the jack-o-lanterns and then they're all donated to farmers to use as pig food.)
Normally Keene is a really small little town (population around 20k), so having about 4 times that many people crammed in their little town square is a site to behold in itself.
The highlight of the day for Mariah was riding in a school bus from the parking lot to the festival. My highlight was seeing all the pumpkin headgear and costumes.
The giant jack-o-lantern tower!
There were so many thousands and thousands of pumpkins lining the streets it's hard to really capture it, but there were some really fun carvings, like Botticelli's Venus in pumpkin form.
We went there with the Giffords; here we are escaping the crowds for dinner on a side street.
Around dusk, people starting lighting their pumpkins. It took a few hours just to get everything lit. There were official counters going around, marking X's on the pumpkins as they were counted.
When the time came, they made everybody stay really really still and quiet so as not to disturb any jack-o-lantern flames while they did the final count. This was serious business.
When we got home, we saw on the news that there were actually violent riots at the festival- we had no idea. We had seen a bunch of police cars but we thought it was just regular crowd control. We were really lucky and came right after the riots had broken out, and left the festival before things got crazy I guess. We never noticed anything.
The next day, we heard that the world record had been broken, but then several days after that we found out that too many pumpkins were disqualified for being unlit at the official count time. So, better luck next year Keene!
What a fun place to visit. Love these pumpkin pics. (Mariah is the cutest pumpkin!)
ReplyDeleteJust caught up on all your adorable pictures! Snow angel lesson, def my fav. :) Sure do love you three and we will include you in our happy thoughts all holiday long! MWAH!
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