Every year the town hosts a two-day festival and I live not far from where it it held – walking distance, easy. There are all sorts of food booths, including apple burgers and apple fritters and the famous pork tenderloins that look like those hats with ear flaps. A lot of people just take the tenderloin meat and double it over in the bun. (This year there are 40 food vendors.)

I have been there when it has been cold enough to snow and so hot that the apple fritter people could only work in 10-minute shifts over the kettles. It’s raining today and 68 degrees right now. Tomorrow and Sunday – the festival days – the temperature is going to be in  the forties and fifties, but no rain predicted.

Attendance has grown over the years tremendously and a lot of the times the pathways at the fairgrounds are packed with half the people going one way and half the other. It is a good idea for kids and short people to hang onto the sleeve of whomever they are with.

Because the crowds are so large, the temperatures in the forties and fifties are sometimes a boon because all the people around you are insulation. Heavy rain is the worse. Soaking wet with squishy shoes and huddled in one of the covered areas is no way to really enjoy a cheese-covered pretzel.

I usually like to go to listen to the groups that play music  or dance – such as The Inclognito Cloggers – and to meander around the craft barn (100 craft stalls).  Rose and I are also curious about a group called Wild Rose Moon. But the trick is to decide when to go – to find that time when the crowds are not so big I am totally engulfed. And to find that time that if I want to break my diet, the lines won’t be so long.

Oh, I almost forgot, the Merchant’s Building is full of antiques and I am not going to joke about being one of them if I go in. Also, and maybe I don’t need to mention this, but in the Primitive Area, you can buy all sorts of stuff. Last year – or maybe it was the year before – I took it into my head to buy a beaver pelt and came home and wore it, yes, on my head.

If you are curious about details, the Apple Festival Website is HERE and you then need to click on a downloadable brochure that lists everything and provides a map. Maybe Rose and I will put X’s at the places we visit – or maybe we just better stay inclognito. Now, see, that pun has taken my fancy and I am going to have to watch myself or it will come out at the wrong time.