Ok. It’s not like it sounds. It’s actually a Mushroom Festival in Kennett Square, PA. And the area boasts 60% of all the mushroom sales for the US. Jadyn is especially excited about going because of the children’s activities. When I was researching the festival I told her they had a Monkey Maze and that’s all it took to get her going! “I wanna go on the Monkey Maze! I wanna go on the Monkey Maze!” Ok. I was saying that too. :o)
We took US1 to get there and all along it were yard sales. It was like somebody 
sent a flyer out letting everybody know it was national yard sale day or something. We went over the Conowingo Dam and the view was very beautiful. We’ve been this way a few times already visiting Holly, the barn manager of Graham Equestrian Center (where we have our bus parked) and to get our raw grass-fed cow’s milk.
As we are driving through rural America I’m noticing something interesting: every tenth of a mile there’s a mile marker that marks the mile and the tenths. So it’ll say 0 miles and 0/10, 0 miles and 1/10 and so on. I don’t know how many miles or tenths of a mile we drove until we finally arrived in the little town of Kennett Square. I think every person in the city and surrounding states were there because it was so crowded and the free parking (on the streets) were taken or it cost $5 to park in a garage or somebody’s yard. So we circled the vicinity like a carrion feeder until we finally spotted a space and pulled in. Thankfully it was only a couple blocks away from one of the entrances.
After paying a $2 admission fee we donned our wrist bands and started our trek
among the mushrooms. To our dismay we didn’t see much in the way of mushrooms, only a couple small booths hocking different varieties. And then we saw……….THE CHILDREN’S RIDES! Jadyn immediately became a tape recorder playing the same tape over and over: “I wanna go on the rides! I wanna go on the rides!” OK. I did too!
We had fun on the Monkey Maze – although she freaked out a little bit because she kept running into the walls. You walk through the maze with your hands in front of you, but all the walls are clear so you can’t see them – not well anyways. So she kept running into them. She had fun in the hall of mirrors and then the big slide at the end. I felt a little bit like a monkey for paying $4 for like 4 minutes start to end. But, she had fun and that’s what counts. We went on other rides (thankfully the adult rode for free with the child) and then moved on to see what else (besides crowds) this festival had to offer.
There were a lot of vendors there selling mostly over priced food, people selling t-shirts and other things. We realized we had to get out of there because we were getting very hungry and didn’t want to get lured into eating everything there. As we were heading out we came upon “The Mushroom Exhibit”. We saw some very cool displays of the different stages of mushroom growth and at the end we played a free game of put-put golf which Jadyn enjoyed. On the way back to the car we gave our wrist bands to a couple with children so they could save themselves $4. They were surprised but glad.
On the way home we stopped a grabbed a bite to eat in the next town and then I
took a nap on the way back to the ranch while Jeanne drove. I happened to be awake though when we crossed a rather large bridge spanning with width of the Susquehanna River and felt that familiar tingle (don’t like heights tingle). It seemed like Jeanne slowed down on purpose as she was driving close to the edge. Hmmmm. Before we arrived home we stopped at our favorite dairy farm for fresh ice cream – Broom’s Bloom Creamery. A sweet end to our day.
