People's Choice Festival, Boalsburg, PA

I mentioned in yesterday's Blip that it's arts festival time in central Pennsylvania. There are actually two major festivals that occur within the same timeframe: the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in State College, and the People's Choice Festival in Boalsburg. So on this day, I visited the second one, in Boalsburg.

There is actually a third fest that started maybe a year or so ago in Lemont, but I have not had the opportunity to visit that one yet. For myself, I consider arts festival time to be an AND situation rather than an either/or; if my schedule permits, I like to visit as many as I can.

I'd like to point out that I'm no lover of the heat and humidity, and my basic nature is to avoid crowds like the plague. So sometimes I have to talk myself into going. I want to see the arts and the booths and experience the whole party scene, but I don't like getting overheated or making my way through crowds.

So I try to visit the fests in the mornings if possible, when the temperatures are cooler and the venues are less crowded. And so once again, I marked two hours of vacation from work, and went over to the Boalsburg fest. Two fests in two days!

The Boalsburg fest has a very different feel than the State College fest. The State College fest takes place mostly downtown, and so it has a strong "town" feel. However, the one in Boalsburg takes place on a big open field on the military museum grounds, with a creek nearby for wading in if you feel like it; it has a much more rural feel.

And so once more, I visited the booths and looked around and took pictures. It was really my goal on both days to try to capture the events more so than to actually look around with the intention to purchase art. I find many of the arts items well above my price range, but things tend to be more within my grasp at Boalsburg, which features more local artists and more reasonable prices.

There was a petting zoo in the middle of the big field, and it featured huge tortoises, llamas, and farm animals. That was a great venue for taking pictures of kids and animals, always a happy topic. And along the edge of the field, one of the landscaping companies had installed a pretty little green area with fancy echinacea; and so it was that I framed the scene with flowers, and then left the venue just as it was starting to get hot.

The song to accompany this image of the Boalsburg fest is Sly and the Family Stone, with Hot Fun in the Summertime.

Additional links:

The main website for the People's Choice Festival.

Last year's visit.