Forest Faire in Girdwood - 07/02/10

Hello!

Since I've been slow at work (and that's going to change very rapidly this next week) and this is a holiday weekend, a co-worker of mine and I took off work a bit early on Friday to drive to Girdwood. Once a year for the 4th of July the Forest Faire takes place. It's a huge craft fair outdoors at a park in Girdwood.

General information: Girdwood is a town (if you can really call it that) about 30 miles south of Anchorage on A1. There is a gas station/convenience store at one end and a ski resort at the other end. I wish I had gotten pics of some of the houses. They were beautiful!! The benches on the front porch of most of the houses are ski lift chairs. Pretty cool!

The people watching at the Forest Faire was a lot of fun. Apparently, it is the hippie gathering in Alaska. There were a couple artists there that I wanted to buy pictures from but didn't have the money for it. Check out their websites: www.whalebonewatercolors.com and www.katiesevignyart.org. Other vendors sold hats, jewelry, custom clothes, soap, honey, and tie-dye underwear. Yes, there was a booth SPECIFICALLY for tie-dye underwear. And I mean panties, not long johns.

The busiest booth was for face painting and hair art. The line there was forever long and there were three hair artists working. If my hair was longer, I would have seriously considered having something done. You'll just have to look at the pictures.

The food court there was different than what I'm used to. I had a reindeer hot dog for lunch. It was good. It tasted like a hot dog. There was a seafood corn dog booth... I was too afraid to ask what is in a seafood corndog. There was a Thai booth, a curry booth, a killer shrimp booth, and a kettle corn and funnel cake booth.

My boss creates blown glass, so we visited her. She just bought a new torch to heat/melt the glass with and we watched her make a couple small items. Very cool... but I'd never attempt it because I'd set myself on fire.

To remind me that there is wildlife all around in Alaska, we saw a Bald Eagle on the drive down and a Moose on the drive back.

4th of July: They do have fireworks here for the 4th. I have been told by more than one person that it's not really worth it. The fireworks are at 11:59pm and it's just not dark enough here to be a good show. I've also been told that the fireworks I positively cannot miss are on New Year's Eve. By then, I'm hoping to have someone(s) to hang out with and watch fireworks with. So for now, I'm being lazy and skipping the fireworks show.

Take care and I'll update you as more stuff happens!