Jennifer

I have never been to a Renaissance fair before, and had always wanted to go to one. In July 2010, I finally got my chance when I went with my mom and her boyfriend to the Sterling Renaissance Festival.

It was like it’s own town, with it’s own restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. It was a weird sensation, since it was so easy to get engrossed in the atmosphere and feel like you were transplanted back in time, then you get the urge to use the camera to take a picture, and you’d be reminded it was a modern representation of what the past might have been like. The festival workers really did a great job at keeping up appearances.

The neat thing was that even real world companies got in the act, with the Potomac Leather Co. having a shop that sold medieval themed clothing such as leather tunics and leather coin pouches.

My mom’s boyfriend wanted to take us to two shows. The first was the Mud Pits. He got us really close, and I think he wanted us to get muddy, but I was a party pooper and noticed the sign that said the first three seats would get muddy, so I had us move back since my Mom and I really didn’t feel like getting mud on us.

The main guy in the play got into the audience to warm up the crowd before the show, where he would try to get us all to wave to him. Once the show went on, all three performers got really muddy. They wanted to get people from the audience to come up and hug them, but we were too chicken. My mom did get her picture taken with them though.

The other show my mom’s boyfriend wanted to see was the Washer wenches, who sprayed water around like the Mud pit performers sprayed mud around. This is the cleaner of the two in that sense, but the dirtier of the two in it’s sexual overtones. It was all in good fun though, and the jokes went right over the heads of the kids in the audience anyway.

They had rides there that were operated completely by two large guys, without any electricity. I convinced my Mom to go with me on one that spun around a pole like a maypole. She got very dizzy and nauseous, and I got quite dizzy for a while and lost my sense of balance. It was a lot of fun though, and I’m trying to convince my mom to go on another ride with me next year. :)

I’m at the Country Inn & Suites at Big Flats right now. The inn is beautiful, with a fireplace in the lobby, a wooden winding staircase. It’s hospitablie with coffee, cocoa, and cookies and milk all the time. Every morning they also have a continental breakfast that’s to die for. They even have waffles and a delicious sausage gravy and biscuits.

The town of Big Flats itself is really nice. There’s a lot of shopping centers, with a decent sized mall right outside the door of the hotel, and a few more plazas with chain stores and restaurants right down the road.

There’s a nice park dedicated to a state trooper who was killed in the line of duty called Sperr Memorial, which has walking trails and a small playground. It’s landscaped beautifully, and really makes for a nice scenic walk.

My mom used to take my sister and I and our friends to many of the waterfalls and gorges in the Finger Lakes region when we were little, but we have never been to the Watkins Glen State Park before. My mom told me the last time that she went there was when she was a teenager in the 1960’s. Things have changed quite a bit since then. She said you used to be able to picnic anywhere, now there is a small designated picnic area at the South entrance. My mom and her friends also used to swim in the natural pools in the park. Swimming is now prohibited since people have died from the strong undercurrents in the pools.

The park really is beautiful. The pathways, stairs, and bridges are made from natural rocks, so they blend in perfectly with the natural surroundings. There is a lot of climbing, so I definitely got my workout that day. :) It was well worth the hike though, as the scenery seemed to get more beautiful the farther out you went. My mom was telling me that her favorite part of the park as a girl was the path where you could walk under the waterfall. We were hoping that was still a part of the park, and happily, it was. My mom was so happy that it still was there. She went up to the falls and put her arms out to catch the water, and had me take two pictures of her doing it. She was so excited, it was so cute. :)

After we got to the path under the waterfall, we turned back, since we thought we had a lot of climbing to do since most of the way there was downhill. However, we took a path called Lover’s Lane that was much shorter and didn’t have nearly as many stairs, so the way back turned out to be easier than the way in.