Art and Rain
The summer my husband and I got married was the first summer I went to the art festival with my in-laws. This is a sort of tradition with them, I think, seeing as Lauren is super into art and the rest of us just kind of enjoy it. That first year was rather hot and very sunny and I ran around with my parasol, as per usual, and had a lovely time. That was the only year it was sunny and dry.
Okay, so I’ve only been to the festival three years now, once that year, twice the year after that and now once thus far this year. I’d like to go back this year, but with how busy we are, I doubt that’ll happen. It’s not supposed to rain for the rest of the week, though, so it might be worth it to try and pop back eventually. Last year we kind of endured the rain, this year it took most of us by surprise and sent us running for cover.
The art festival is a pretty cool thing. There are artists in tents lined up and down Gateway Center near and around Point State Park and they’re all mostly selling expensive pieces ranging from paintings to pottery. It’s always fun to look around at what weird things people come up with and leaf through some of their prints. There are a couple artists who are always there that I really enjoy. I meant to grab a couple greeting cards from one, and maybe a print from another, but we never got back around to them. Like all festivals, the art festival has a line of food vendors selling over-priced fries and chicken on pita. Not that we didn’t buy said fries and chicken on pita, but still, it’s really impractical. Maybe next year I’ll think to pack us a lunch… or dinner, or whatever.
This year we went with some friends of my husband’s from high school and his sisters. It was the pretty standard trip, we parked farther away than necessary because Google maps is unaware that sometimes you can’t just turn left, and so we pulled into the first parking garage we found. We drove through rain which had completely cleared to be a sunny blue sky by the time we got there. We met up with everyone and walked around the tents, browsing what everyone had before heading over to the park for food. And that was our trip.
As we were eating the sky started to drip. We ran for shelter under the bridge with many other festival patrons and waited it out until it seemed to have stopped. As soon as we ventured out, however, and started looking at more artists the rain and wind picked up again and people started closing up. It was practically time for the festival to close anyway, I think. We ran over to the hotel across the street, a super fancy hotel at that, and took shelter under the overhang there. We hung out there and watched the rain and shivered in the wind for a while until we decided to risk loitering in the hotel and just hope that no one questioned us on what we were doing. No one did, so we hung out in the lobby and tried to wait out the rain. We were more successful than one would think. The rain did ebb off after a while and by the time Logan and I got back to the parking garage it had pretty much slowed to a drizzle.
I’ll admit, this year was kind of disappointing. Usually we hang out with the family and it’s a good time. We walk down to the point and sit by the fountain and see the ducks. We didn’t get to see any ducks this year, and didn’t even really get to look at all the artists, but it wasn’t all bad. We enjoyed seeing friends we don’t often get to hang out with and it’s always nice to spend sometime with the sisters. Maybe we’ll make it back this year, maybe not, but there’s always next year. Have a lovely day, my friends.
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