Today the family went to the 81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival.

I have wanted to attend this for some years and for some reason or other it never happened, so I was determined to attend this year. And attend we did!

We took the shuttle to Austin’s famous Zilker Park, and in a way, the shuttle was an event unto itself. The city provided free shuttles to/from the event, and they used school buses for it. This was the first time my kids got to ride a school bus (I rode them all the time when I was growing up), so now they sorta know what it’s like… minus the loud kids, bullying, and other assorted mayhem that comes with the school bus. 🙂  It brought back memories of being on the bus Safety Patrol!

After arriving at the park we went to the “build-a-kite” workshop. It was a free workshop sponsored by HEB and others and you could build a basic kite. Middle child and Youngest child opted to build a kite, and they flew just fine. The wind today was ample for kite flying, but it would die down at times and many kites would be crashing to the ground. Yesterday the winds in Austin were 25-35 MPH steady and gusty, so that would have been some very interesting kite flying weather.

We walked around, checked out many of the kites. All sorts of kites of all shapes, sizes, designs, colors, and variety. It’s almost impossible to describe or even capture on film just how cool it was to look up in the sky and see hundreds of kites flying together. It’s just something you have to experience.

We ate “fair food”, from corn dogs to sausage on a stick to snow cones to cotton candy to funnel cakes. Yes… I can’t pass up a funnel cake, tho the one we had was very oily (I suspect they didn’t let it drain enough). Oh yes, and roasted corn. Mmm. Everything was rather expensive, but all proceeds after expenses are benefiting charities and worthy causes so it’s all good. I think I’m going to have a very light salad for dinner tho. 😉

After watching many kites, flying our free kites, and walking around and seeing all there was to see, we ended up buying our own kite. A nice nylon “triangle-style” (I don’t know what the proper term is). It flew quite well, and I had a lot of fun flying it. It was tough flying tho, with so many kites in the air, so many people around, you didn’t have the total freedom to roam where and how needed to keep the kite aloft. Thus, the most often heard thing today was: *thud* “Sorry!!” “No problem!” as kites would dive down, hit someone in the head, strings tangle around you, tails whipping in your face. But no one got mad; everyone expected to get hit sooner or later. It was a day filled with laughter, smiles, and fun. Good times.

If you haven’t been to the Kite Festival, you need to try it. And do like we did, go in the morning, leave in the afternoon. The lines for the shuttle were unreal, but since we’re early birds well… we were in and out no problem.