Orange Street Festival

Yesterday we drove down to Orange, a small town about 30 miles south, for their annual Street Festival. We’d never been to this event before, and didn’t know what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised. About 4 blocks of the downtown area (most of it, as far as I could tell) were blocked off, and the street lined with all of the usual vendors: the “crap crafts,” the street food, the businesses with information about their products and services, the political candidates’ booths with flyers and buttons, and a handful of real artisans. I’m not sure why we enjoyed this so much, since it really wasn’t any different than other street festivals we’ve gone to. Maybe it was just our mood, or the energy of the crowd, or the fact that despite being a very hot day, everyone was friendly and cordial, and we didn’t see anyone whining or complaining or behaving badly. Not even one kid begging for a toy or crying over a lost balloon.

Or maybe it was because our first stop was the booth of the 4-H Dairy Club, who were selling the most delicious milkshakes. At first I thought that these were special milkshakes, made from the milk of cows they had milked that very morning. Well, no, they turned out to be made from the usual milkshake mix poured into the usual milkshake machine. But I was assured that several people in the booth had actually milked cows that morning, even if none of it made it into our shake, and somehow that made me feel better.

Some pretty Guatamalan baskets on display:

This guy was getting an amazing sound out of these small wooden pipes:


Some street food:



And something I had never seen before, an artist selling Jesus posters.