Renaissance Festival

Outside of Houston a man with a lot of property to spare has built a permanent Renaissance Fortress in the woods complete with 7 villages representing different geographical areas, i.e. Italy, Scotland, Greece, France, etc. They have all the period food like turkey legs, meat on a stick (a pork chop on a skewer), baked potato filled with stew, etc. The festival runs for almost 2 months, from the beginning to October through the end of November. The festival employs about 1,000 to run the demonstrations, perform, and to mingle adding to the ambiance. Then there are the 25,000 other people who come to play "adult dress up and to people watch like us. The costumes are amazingly elaborate and expensive. You can buy them there as well as all the fairy jewelry, swords, and woodcrafts you could want.  It also seems to be a big excuse for anyone, and I mean anyone, to wear whatever they want, show as much cleavage as they want, and get as drunk as they want. Basically its like an old school Vegas. The whole things is quite remarkable. If you're ever in the Houston area in the fall you should make a point to attend. It's something you'll never forget.

Ryan's brother and his kids have made this a fall tradition and we made a special trip down to attend with them. It was so crazy how "into it" people get. I still can't figure out what kinds of jobs these people have that they can take off for 2 months to play dress up. Here are some of our favorite people from that day. By the way.....in my opinion not EVERYONE should be allowed to wear a chainmail bikini.