Renaissance Festival at Larkspur, CO

     This was a pretty big deal.  Every weekend in July the little town of Larkspur holds a Renaissance Festival.  From what I can tell, there are several thousand people that flock to the site each day to revel in crafts, food, drink, somewhat bawdy entertainment and animal rides for the kids.  It seemed to me that at least half of the attendees were in costume.  There were more bustiers than in a Victoria's Secret shop.

     The site is a fairly steep hillside at about 7000 feet...non-trivial for us old farts.  Nonetheless, we persevered.  Fairly early on I bought a very nice walking stick and made good use of it.  I haven't had one since my backpacking days in Colorado forty years ago.  We arrived at 1000 as the gates opened and walked up the hill checking out the shops and the other participants.

 I included this picture for two reasons.  The stilt walkers were typical of the period entertainment.  Also notice the rear view of good friend and classmate, Buzzy Glenn on the right.  The ratio of shoulders to waist is NOT representative of we folks who are approaching our middle seventies.

         One of the highlights are the jousting contests.  They have three; one at 1130, one at 1400 and one at 1730.  The first one, which we saw, did not include simulated combat.  Rather, there were exhibitions with lance, sword and javelin.  The picture above captures a horseman (knight) at full gallop slicing a cabbage in half with his sword.  It was a hot, mid-nineties day with a lot of hill climbing, so we bailed out around 1330 after we stopped for a drink.  Durelle and Buzzy had diet Pepsi while I had a Coors.  Would you believe that I got carded.  I told the serving wench that the last time I was carded was before she was born.

     As we were leaving, I took one more shot to show that most of the attendees were in costume.