Fulton OysterFest in Full Swing

It's Sunday morning and Curt and I are on our way to George West, a town about an hour away. A young bluegrass gospel group that we discovered and loved when we attended the Rockport Gospel Music Festival in January will be playing today at a church in George West. So we thought it might be fun to take a road trip and enjoy a different church and some terrific music all at the same time. So riding in the car gives me a chance to show you some photos of our visit to the OysterFest yesterday.

First order of business was the parade. We picked up our lawn chairs and walked two blocks to the spot where the parade turned its last corner. We made friends with a great couple in a golf cart, Terry and JoAnn, and we all enjoyed the parade together.

You can see our house, yellow with gray roof, in the background behind Terry's head...so that shows you how close the parade came to where we live.  

I love small town parades. Everybody turns out for them. There's a lot of good natured competition for the candy and Mardi Gras beads that are thrown from the floats, and later in the day you'll see people, men, women and children, sucking lollipops from the parade, necks bedecked with dozens of strands of colorful beads.

The Color Guard led off. Here in Texas everyone still stands, removes hats, and places hands over their hearts when the flag comes by. 

I've never lived in a place where the Sheriff's department had snazzy ATVs and speedboats. But we have them in Rockport!

Then came the Rockport-Fulton High School Marching Band. A parade just isn't a parade without a band!

Then the High School Drill Team...or maybe the ROTC...there wasn't a sign, so I'm not sure. The girls got to march and carry a flag, but the boys got to carry rifles. We start 'em young in Texas!

I only caught photos of a few of the floats. Once they started throwing candy and beads, so many people crowded in front of me that I had to delete most of my photos...just a lot of shots of backsides as people rushed for the loot!

Fulton's town trolley. How many towns do you know that measure 8 blocks by 5 and have a trolley to call their own?

Biggest pink flamingos I ever saw!

The Boiling Pot is a nearby seafood restaurant. It's the first place we ate the first time we visited Rockport. And it's still one of the most popular restaurants on the beach road. Love the lobster outfits!

These Sea Queens were a riot! A whole float full of blue sequin covered buxom women, and they would jump off the float and dance alongside, shimmying and shimmering!

This little girl got her beads, and the woman in front of me sure wants some!!!

I wish I could have gotten a photo of the most amazing float, but I never had a clear view. It was a flatbed trailer carrying women of all ages, sizes and shapes, dressed in camo. It was an outdoor adventure group for women, called Women in the Wild, or something similar. But the funniest thing was a bright pink sign on the side that said,

                         "ASK ME HOW YOU CAN WIN YOUR CUSTOM PINK AR-15!"

Only in Texas!!!

After the parade, Terry and JoAnn took us in their golf cart to see their little vacation spot here in Fulton. It's a darling Park Model home, 399 square feet, on a lovely lot that they took from a viney jungle to a beautifully shaded, manicured oasis. What great vision and talent...and LOADS of hard work!

Then Curt and I went and "did" the OysterFest. There was a huge long line to get in, but it moved quickly.

 Once inside the tents, we really couldn't get out quickly enough. The mass of humanity all pressed together, shuffling counterclockwise around the vendors...

And in the food tent (which the locals call the Beer Tent, which gives you some idea of its main purpose), the band was cranked up to full volume and every seat at every table was taken. Again, shuffling once around the tent, pressed against everyone else, was enough to send us outside at the first exit, gasping for air!

The cool cloudy weather certainly didn't dampen the enthusiasm for OysterFest!

Our favorite part was back in the Midway, watching the kids on the rides. They loved them!

This kiddie Dragon ride is the one that's set up literally in our front yard.

It was also great fun watching the young men, all of whom were certain they could swing the hammer hard enough to win a prize. The game is obviously rigged...none these buff young guys at the peak of their strength could ring the bell...but that didn't keep them from trying!!

These next two shots show you how close the midway is to our cottage... There's our sun room right in the center of the picture!

Sleeping was a little difficult for me last night...not so much from the noise of the carnival, though. What kept me awake was the band at the bar down the street. They usually play at a reasonable volume, so all we hear (or rather, feel) is the thumping of the bass, and that lulls us right to sleep. But last night the band had to override the carnival noise, so they were cranked up full throttle. It probably would have been ok if I hadn't known all the songs, but I lay there in bed singing along. Finally Curt suggested that I might get up and move the melodies to the other part of the house. Good point. I sang along till 1 a.m., when the band finally resumed its former decibel level. And technically that was 2 a.m. because we had to set our clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time. A short night, to be sure!

Today's OysterFest festivities will no doubt be dampened...we have a strong, steady rain that's supposed to turn into major thunderstorms later on, with a total of up to 5" of rain! I feel sorry for all the carnival staff. I won't be surprised if they start taking it down today, well before the scheduled end of Oysterfrest at 6 p.m. 

But we've enjoyed--and survived--our first Fulton OysterFest! Hope you enjoyed it, too!

Living in the Middle of a Carnival!

My, how our quiet little spot on the Bay has changed! Several weeks ago, the crew from the Town of Fulton came over and removed the Christmas lights that we enjoyed so much. 

I  was a little sad to see them go, but I needn't have worried. We're seeing more lights now than we ever imagined! I'll show you the process....

Here's our quiet view of the Bay from our sunroom....before all the excitement:

Then one morning last week we awoke to a repetitive ratchet-like sound. It went on and on, and we lay in bed trying to imagine what the sound was. When we got up to investigate, we thought at first that the snow from the north had found its way down to South Texas.

Then we realized that the white blanket was an ENORMOUS tent, and the ratchet sound was a reciprocating drill in a Bobcat, driving the tent stakes into the ground.

(Oh, at this point I'm going to depart from the story. See the blocky pillar in the foreground? There are two of those right outside our cottage. For months I thought they were rather unsightly pillars, and because I didn't know what they were, I was constantly cropping them out of my photos whenever possible. Recently my friend Phoebe informed me that they are the bases for the two original harbor lights at Fulton Harbor...relics from generations ago. So from here on out, I'll proudly include them in my photos!)

Throughout the morning we watched the tent go up in stages, and we found out that they were beginning preparations for the 36th annual Fulton OysterFest.

Suddenly our view of the bay was drastically changed. We couldn't see it at the time, but the next day when we took a walk around the area, we saw that they had erected an equally large striped tent behind the first white one. I asked Curt to stand halfway to the end of it to give you an idea of the scale. These things are HUGE!

Check out those tent stakes. They're at least an inch and a half in diameter; maybe even two inches!

Here's the inside of half of one of the tents...empty:

This one will hold all the vendors' booths for the OysterFest, while the other tent will house the food and beverages. People have told us about the OysterFest and have said that we won't believe the magnitude of it...especially living right on the edge of it. So we checked out the photos online of past OysterFests. They expect as many as 36 THOUSAND people here, right in our front yard! You'll have to look it up. Just google Fulton OysterFest and poke around a little. You'll be amazed. The proceeds benefit the Fire Department, updating equipment and providing protective gear for the local firefighters.

So back to the saga. On Monday we saw a huge, colorful truck come down our road and turn into the Convention Center parking lot across the street. Soon another followed....then another....and all the trucks lines up side by side in the parking lot.

The Pride of Texas Carnival had arrived!

And then we got to watch one of the most impressively choreographed operations we've ever witnessed. We thought our Mexico mission medical set-up was pretty slick. That's small potatoes compared to this operation! Over the next three days the crews assembled some amazingly intricately-engineered rides and attractions, from tame little kiddie rides (the Dragon that goes around on an oval track up and down gentle hills is right in front of our sunroom)...

 

To A classic Ferris Wheel, just down the road to the south...

...to a couple of skyscraper-high thriller rides like the Kamikaze right in front of our swimming pool:

We've observed the hard-working crews assembling, welding, connecting vast electrical intricacies, then methodically cleaning, inspecting, double-checking every connection and moving part, and re-cleaning every seat, rail, handle, window, and polishing road dust off even every outer surface of each ride. Nothing was left untouched or unchecked. Finally, yesterday evening after 3 days of hard work, all systems were given their final check. All the lights went on, the music played, and all the rides were started (without passengers), as the crews and supervisors inspected everything one last time. Just at dark everything shut down and all the workers walked the two blocks North where the trucks are parked on a large vacant lot. The trailers of the trucks are now converted to bunkhouses for the crews to live in while they're here. There are also about a dozen large 5th wheel trailers, presumably for the supervisors and more permanent members of the operation.

This morning the workers got the morning off. They all had to report down here at 9:30, and apparently everything was operating satisfactorily, because at 9:35 they all headed back to their housing area with big grins on their faces. We've been watching the whole process with our binoculars, and we feel like we've almost gotten to know some of the crew members. Most are Hispanic, and all are very diligent workers. We've really enjoyed watching their interactions with one another.

At 2 p.m. today, a few of the supervisors drifted down to begin getting ready for the 5 p.m. opening. Both Curt and I were away for several hours after that, but when we returned, the operation was in full swing. In addition to the rides, there are many tents with contests and prizes to win (large stuffed animals and the like). There are also a few food booths. The one that I'm sure won't do well this year is the Slushie tent. Unlike other years (judging from the online photos with everyone in shorts and tank tops), we had a significant cold front roll in early this morning, with temperatures in the 30s and winds over 30 mph. VERY unusual this time of year in South Texas! So I imagine that's going to put a bit of a damper on the OysterFest this year.

But one thing that wasn't dampened was the fireworks display. They were set off from a boat in the bay tonight, RIGHT in front of our cottage, and they were spectacular! Photos never do justice to fireworks displays, but just to give you an inkling, here are a few shots...full moon, rides, music, fireworks...how much more exciting can it get???

This is just Thursday night. We have all weekend to go. The OysterFest doesn't end until late Sunday night. There will be lots of live bands, loads of artisan vendors, food and beverage vendors, oyster eating contests (for men and women), oyster shucking contests, and who knows what else? It promises to be an exciting weekend...and we get to live right in the middle of it! There's nobody closer to it than we are!

Who would have thought we'd find all this excitement in the sleepy little bayside town of Fulton Beach, Texas?