~:: Have at Thee, Then ::~

Magic.  People with diaphanous robes and flowers in their hair play here before we get up and after we fall asleep.  Also skunks do.

Shadows JUST LIKE SUMMER.  Except it’s not yet.

The light flowing down the river.  If you go up on the deck, you can look down into it, flowing all the way back up the mountain.

And now, the main event: our trip to the Renaissance Faire:

Char didn’t have to make Rachel wear this.  But G was gently coerced.  Looks great though, huh?

You now how they say a picture is better than a thousand words?  Well, I always say, why use one shot when you can use FIVE?

Yeah.  The middle-aged Flemmish lady is me.  Sigh.  I wanna look like Rachel.

Evidently, G and I now converse using sign language of some kind.

Chaz makes us buzz through the entire small village before really looking at anything.  But we passed the horses, and there I stuck.  So she had to too.

This is the only mare we know of used in jousting.  Her name is Brittany, and she’s a Percheron.  We all loved her.  And she loved us.  I have 200 more shots of Rachel saying hello to her.  Rachel is the only one who scored —

‘

A kiss.  Honestly.  This little mare actually kissed her.

This is the face you see when Rachel becomes acquisitive.

You can see the wheels turning, can you not?  What she doesn’t realize is that she is also being given a horse hug – this is how they do it, turning their heads to press their cheek against  you.

Yes.

Sigh.  They should have lilacs between them.

This is Ms. Brittany in action.

Such power.

The Royal Court (that’s a young Elizabeth with her back to us).  And the World Champion (seriously.  He is.) jouster, eating a plate of nachos  between joust matches.

In the stands, waiting for the event.  The stands were actually two wooden benches.  And we got ’em first.

Here, I capture both girls’ good sides at one time.

From where we are sitting, we have a great, and maybe dangerous, view of the lists, “lists” being the jousting lanes.

And now it begins.  The Irish knight.  He’s riding the finest jousting horse in the world.  It was at this point that I finally tried out, after owning this camera for about fifty years, the motorized exposure option.  What follows is a frame by frame re-enactment of the joust.  If you scroll quickly, maybe you’ll get the feeling for how heavy these combatants are (around 2500 pounds, all told).  I have actually run two rounds together.

This knight lost.  The Brittany mare’s knight won.  I was worried the ENTIRE time.

And this is my prize of the day.  I found him in one of the dozens of venders’ stalls, handmade and winsome.  And gaspingly underpriced.  There’s a pattern for him on Etsy.  You just have to look through all the crochet dragon stuff to find it.

Once again, a fine time was had by all, topped off with a dinner at a fancy-dancey renaissance-themed restaurant in town.  We were the ONLY people there dressed appropriately.

Outside of the waitresses.