ONCE UPON A TIME... Alan and Erica journeyed to ye far off land of Muskogee on a quest to find enchanted weapons. They happened upon a castle of old ,where they were greeted by a jovial wench. She showed them many weapons. From the time Alan was a young lad, all he wanted to do was to hold ye magical ax and recite incantations. When he picked up thy ax, the largest grin appeared on his round face and he shined brighter than the northernmost star. Poor Erica was not as lucky. She chanced upon thy giant bardiche but thou arms were too spindly to wield the weapon. She tried with all her might... she grunted and pulled and made horrid faces... but the weapon would not lift off thy ground. Then the court jester appeared and laughed a hearty ho ho ho! The bardiche was cursed to never leave thy wooden floor. The wench, jester, Alan and Erica all gave a boisterous laugh and merriment was had by all. THE END.
Just kidding, none of that happened. But Wes & I did go to the Renaissance Festival at the Castle at Muskogee last weekend for Alan's birthday. It was a pretty fun experience (minus the heat... walking around outside in the Oklahoma heat for an afternoon was terrible!) The fair was held on the "castle grounds" and it was set up to look like a medieval village. There were various stages with different performers every hour, a few bars & food vendors and lots of shops. We had a turkey leg, funnel cake and beer for lunch when we got there. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the grounds with Alan and his friends.
None of the weapons were enchanted but there was a historical society at the fair that had old medieval battle weapons. So my story wasn't completely made up! LOL The girl who volunteered at the booth was a history buff who shared factoids on the swords, axes and maces. And, she let us handle the weapons! Alan picked the heaviest thing for me to hold.
There were some ladies spinning wool into thread!
We went into just about every shop and saw each vendor. (and there were a lot!) My favorites were:
*a craftsman who made wooden mugs and puzzle boxes,
*a shop that sold replicas of armor, chain-mail and helmets and
*a shop that demonstrated weaving, spinning and basket-making
There was a lot of neat stuff but we didn't find anything that we couldn't do without so we left sans souvenir.
The top right picture was from the Musical Blades performance. There is a guy in a white t-shirt sitting on the bench with a guitar. He wasn't part of the band and he didn't play the guitar. He just sat there with it.
We also saw two performances. One was a gypsy group called Wine & Alchemy. A woman sung and her band mates played various instruments. For their final song, she danced with a sword. The other performance we saw was the Musical Blades. They were a musical comedy troupe of pirates. Their act consisted of dirty jokes, original pirate themed songs and covers of hip hop songs. It was Wes' favorite part of the day. I've only been to one other medieval fair (the one in Norman) and I didn't really enjoy it but since Alan requested that we go for his birthday, we ventured out. I would say this Renaissance Festival was a good one. It had a variety of things to do and see and you could easily spend a day there.
Erin, Matt, Melanie, Alan, me & Wes. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
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