Festival Report

 

Adventure Location:

Decatur, Alabama

Date: May 27 summation post, 2024

Howdy from the OFM. The first post today was to let you know things were not going well computer wise.

Now we go to the late day telling of the festival events sort of. The weather played heck with the events for the whole time of the event. The Point Mallard complex is the sight of the festival. It is a no cost admission with a huge attendance measured in the thousands. The campground is totally full at this time of the year but folks still want to come into the campground to spend the day but there is only room for the campers and guests of the campers. Even then it gets very crowded. Campers and invited guests have to have window tags to be in the campground. Even with that restriction the campground runs out of room for guests to park. Here was the first morning line up basically at daylight when our security came on duty.

Within a few minutes the police security got there and things started getting organized. If you did not have a pass the security sent you out of the campground to the regular entrance to the fun. At peak the OFM went to lunch and coming back from lunch he measured over two miles of single lane traffic in line to get into the festival grounds where they had lots of parking space. It is a big mess for sure.

While going to the morning check things out we noticed this old car in the short term camping section. Yep they have an old car show part of the festival. We think it is an old Chevelle station wagon from way back in the OFM youth.

We promised a lot of the readers a hot air balloon report. So here it goes. The OFM got up early Sunday to be at the field early. It was about a half mile walk from the Castle and we briskly made our way through the madhouse mob to the field.

First a bit of an explanation. The launch wind speed expected for the balloons is less than 8 mph wind speed. The way the trees were dancing it was way over that as the OFM walked out the back of the campground, past the soccer field, past the tennis courts, base ball fields, an administration building etc, and got to the golf driving range that serves as the launch area. Sure enough nothing was being unpacked to go for a ride.

Over in a parking lot was a couple of hot air balloons laid out on the ground as a display. Several folks were wandering around looking it all over. In other words nothing happening.

At least the big band performance the first night was pretty good and a nice variety of decent music for about three hours after dark. The next night was a pretty good fireworks display after a shorter band performance was complete. Both of these events we enjoyed from the convenience of the Castle. And tonight we plan a very laid back night of rest in hopes of quieter camping days for a while until the Fourth of July event. Sleep well everyone.