Colorado Trip 2015: Ye Olde Independence Day

We spent Independence Day 2015 in Colorado with my family. As luck would have it, Independence Day 2015 fell on a Saturday, which meant the Colorado Renaissance Festival was open for business (it's only open on weekends). What better way to celebrate America's independence from England, we reasoned, than to spend the day being entertained by LARPers in a quasi-fantastical medieval English village? So off to the Ren Faire we all went!

When I was growing up, visiting the Renaissance Festival was one of my favorite summertime activities. My brother and sister and myself looked forward to our visit every year. This is mainly because we were (still are) huge nerds. This is also because the festival is held in Larkspur, Colorado, a picturesque little foothills town. Nathan and I have attended the Arizona Renaissance Festival a couple of times (most recently when Lorelai was still a baby), and it was fun, but it lacked the beauty and charm (not to mention shade!) of its Colorado counterpart.

Even with the shade, it turned out to be a pretty hot day...the hottest day of our trip, in fact. So of course, it was the day I forgot to pack hats for the girls in the car. The poor things spent much of the day squinting against the bright sun. However, there was enough interesting stuff to see and do that the complaints were few.

The fun started even before we entered the main gate; some costumed characters were wandering around handing out rare coins (hmmm, where might this knave have come by the money, I wonder?)

 

The girls were also excited to meet Twink the Fairy, who gave each of them a special "fairy stone" coated in fairy dust/sprinkles. Their hands were sparkly for a while after handling these stones (to Aurora's delight).

There were a few famous characters inside the park as well. The girls were particularly excited to meet "Cinderella" and "Kit the handsome prince" (as they appeared in Disney's live-action Cinderella earlier this year).

We also managed to find a lot of cool shows to watch right off the bat. Possibly my favorite was the fire-eater! He wasn't pretty to look at, but he did some awesome stuff...

...like shoot a huge blast of fire across the stage, from his mouth! Sweet!

 

It was the stuff of video games. I was jealous of the man, even though I knew if I could do what he did, I'd probably have bad teeth and look pretty grizzled too.

We also attended a big cats show, which featured some very beautiful large cats, like a black panther, a snow leopard, and a white tiger. We learned a lot of cool facts about each species, and got to see the cats leap, play, and chase their handlers across the stage. It was both awesome and a little terrifying (I am not a cat person, so I was a bit on edge the whole time!).

Our favorite show might have been the Kamikaze Fireflies, a two-person acrobatic/juggling/comedy act. It was just one man and one woman, but they both had incredible athletic ability and managed to wow the audience while keeping us laughing the entire time.

 

 

They performed tricks as diverse as balancing on a stack of chairs, rotating upside down while holding a platter of drinks...

...throwing marshmallows into each other's mouths while hula-hooping...

...and juggling flaming torches while sitting on the shoulders of an audience volunteer.

 Very cool stuff, and the girls loved watching them!

There was more to the festival than just shows, though. We also checked out a lot of the stores; the girls were especially obsessed with the heavy weaponry.

 

 

 

 

We also found a "magic" wand store, which had my Harry Potter-reading daughter obsessed for a while.

 

However, when it came time to buy a souvenir at the day's end, Lorelai decided on a bird whistle instead...

 

...while Celeste got herself a wand!

 

Aurora, being the action girl she is, chose a wooden sword (pink, of course), which she promptly used to pummel the store owner...

There were a lot of other neat things to see and do at the festival. We saw a parade, complete with elephants...

...visited some rescue greyhounds...

 

 

...let the girls try out the Royal Maze...

 

...took rides on the King's Swing...

 

...rode the swinging pirate ships and the jousting "trainer"...

 

 

...sampled some delicious treats (these Italian ices are my favorite, but the huge turkey legs--not pictured--are also quite delicious!)...

 

...met a bunch of animals at the petting zoo...

 

...met Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons...

At least, it LOOKED like her. Oh, and Melisandre, the Red Priestess of R'hllor was there too!

...watched a little light jousting match (sadly, we didn't get to stay and see the "joust to the death" later that afternoon; we were too tired out)...

 

...met the falconer...

 

...and got to take some cheesy photos on our way out of the festival grounds.

 

 We were so happy the girls enjoyed themselves so much, even if the heat got a little wearying after a while. It encouraged us to plan a visit to the Arizona festival at some point in the future. But who knows? Maybe we'll visit the Colorado festival again one day!

Grandma and Grandpa Nash had beaten us home to prepare dinner for all us hungry Renaissance Festival-goers. After a hurried meal, we all had to pile into our cars again, this time to go find a place to watch some fireworks!

Luckily, everyone knew a few good places. We actually parked in a mall parking lot next to a Walmart. I was convinced this would be a bad idea (all the overhead lights!), but someone who had parked near us knew the store manager, and prevailed upon him to turn off all the lights in the parking lot, which actually made things pretty dark (and thus easier to see all the fireworks!).

Since we arrived kind of early, Grandma and Grandpa handed out a whole bunch of glow-sticks. It looked like a European rave in the bed of Grandpa's truck!

All the girls had a blast dancing, playing with cousins, and singing songs patriotic and otherwise. Plus, we got to see some pretty decent fireworks!

So, at the end of the day, we did end up celebrating America's birthday after all. We'd just spent the whole rest of the day playing in fantasy Britain as well! It's nice when you can have it both ways. It was a wonderful July Fourth, and I'm so glad we got to spend it together as a family. It was somewhat bittersweet for me, since Nathan had to fly back to Tucson the next evening due to work. But this was a great final day to spend together in Colorado.