Sunday, June 24, 2007

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire


Yesterday was the Celtic Fling at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. A number of the Clans setup tents at the festival, in attendance were Clan Scott, Clan Boyd, Clan McAllister, Clan Campbell and Clan Donald. The weather was warm with a nice breeze, it was a great day to walk the festival grounds.

All the clans fly the flag of Scotland, know as the saltire, the white cross of St. Andrew on a blue background. The flag dates back to the 9th century and is the oldest national flag still in use. When the flag was designed I doubt the designers ever thought the flag would appear on a pair of sun glasses.

Because I attended the faire; I learned there were three types of people.
1. People that are Scottish.
2. People that wish they were Scottish.
3. People with no ambition.

Many of the festivals feature dancers from local schools and this festival was no exception. The Irish costumes are colorful and expensive, I saw a couple of the dresses with for sale signs, "worn 5 times, only $500 dollars."

The festival draws thousand to the festival grounds and traffic backs up on the Pennsylvania turnpike. Saturday a tractor trailer ran into 4 cars that were stopped on the turnpike; the tractor and a least one of the cars caught on fire. Three people died in the accident and the turnpike was closed for more than 10 hours. I exited the turnpike two hours before the accident and traffic was already starting to backup. The interchange is under construction and the placement of the E-Zpass lane was poorly chosen. The inner most lane was for E-Zpass only but no one could get to that lane due to all the other vehicles that wanted to pay cash. This isn't the first accident caused by traffic backing up but we hope they soon find a solution.

2 comments:

chaindropz said...

I like this post. You hang out with a good crowd.
- Reviresco!

Bob said...

I've never had a bad time at a Celtic festival. Anytime you stop by a Clan tent you are made to feel welcome and they usually offer you some "water of life!"