We finally made it to the Pioneer Day Festival this weekend. We started with the parade through downtown. Mayo being a 1 high school county only had the one marching band which was a shame because parades are more fun when you have a couple of different bands intermingled among the floats, old cars and others that are included in any parade. It would of be nice to see a military band, veterans from the area and more floats made by the various non-profits as well. I mean if you are going to have a parade you might as well go all out, right? While we enjoyed the display and the kids ran around picking up the various candy treats being thrown from the participants it was a really nice day for it. Just a little bit cloudy, a faint breeze and the sun peeking through at regular intervals.
Next, we walked downtown towards Veteran’s Park to see the main event with food, craft vendors, non-profit organizations booths, and music. Before we got halfway there we decided to see if we could find a parking place a little bit closer because Mom couldn’t walk all the way from the post office to the park and it was getting warmer. However finding parking close to the park was next to impossible but after driving around for about 30 minutes someone finally left and we caught a break with a place right across the street from the park. Walking in the first thing you really notice is all the police vehicles parked along one side. Not only the local Lafayette County vehicles but police from almost all the surrounding counties as well. It is nice to have the support from other small counties in the area.
The second thing you notice when you start to walk around is all the food vendors with long lines in front of them. Yes, it was noon when we got there but there obviously wasn’t enough of them to go around. Also, there were really not as many “handmade” vendors as you would think there ought to be. The park is very lumpy and has hills up and down and around the park so that may be why the booths weren’t arranged as neatly and flowing as they might be. And you may want to take into account that almost every single person would like to be under some shade even in October. I would like to see a couple of tents sent up with just tables and chairs so more people could sit and enjoy just being there. We had a heck of a time finding a place for mom to sit while we roamed around seeing what was there. Too bad we didn’t get a chance to try out the food. We saw a local author’s tent, a local craft artist, and could listen to the different musicians as they played but we didn’t see one of our favorite barbecue trailers that recently shut down after only being opened for a month or two.
All in all, it was a nice day and we look forward to next year when just maybe we will actually receive an application to participate and sell our handmade items. There were enough people there roaming around and buying stuff it may be worth it to put this event on our list of vendor opportunities for next year. To find out more about participating in next year’s you will need to join the Facebook group Lafayette Activities Group to keep abreast of the announcements and get the name and phone numbers of the organizers. Below is the movie we created from our pictures and little videos we took of the parade and the festival. We hope you enjoy it.