There's a fungus among us!

Aren't they pretty?

I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures of The Mushroom Festival! I know I've mentioned before that we live near the town in Pennsylvania that is considered "The Mushroom Capital of the World." In fact, mushrooms are surprisingly Pennsylvania's biggest agricultural crop. Interesting huh? Even though we don't live in the town that's considered the Mushroom Capital, you can't drive very far without seeing many, many mushroom farms in most of the towns around here.

So evidently every year, this town has it's famous Mushroom Festival. It's a huge event with many, many thousands of people attending. We started out our day by going to the parade. 

The Son and The Niece thought it was great fun. The adults were a but disappointed because there was not even one marching band, pretty much the parade consisted of classic cars ("Cool Babies" as The Son calls them), local politicians, some dude who was called "Mr. Delaware" as in a Mr. Delaware kind of guy that won a pageant. I still have yet to google him. Nonetheless, the kids had fun.

Oh yeah, the parade also had this... a person dressed up in a mushroom costume. That's not something you see every day now, is it? 

After the parade we headed by the Kids' Entertainment Tent. The Son and The Niece had a fantastic time doing the twist and marching in a parade while singing "You're a Grand Old Flag". I do love me some George M. Cohan! Look at these two, twisting away like they did last summer! 

This woman got in on the twisting action with The Kids. How funny! 

After the entertainment, The Husbands carried The Kids up to the main street where there were lots of vendors to enjoy. Our husbands...always a couple of fun guys. (ha ha, you know I had to say that at least once in this post, right?) 

We saw this thing called The MushRoom. It was weird because there was nothing really inside it except for a couple folding chairs. I didn't get it. It did serve as a great meeting place for us all later though.

We visited the tent where they show how they grow the mushrooms, it was quite interesting. Next year, I hope to go on one of the actual mushroom farm tours. Here's the son, posing with lots of different varieties of 'shrooms. 

This is my favorite picture from the day, all those mushrooms in the back look so pretty (and yummy) to me and although The Son would never eat an actual mushroom, he was more than happy to pick one up and pose with it. 

 Lastly, I got this shot of some button mushrooms and how they look when they're growing. Neat huh? We were allowed to touch them and they felt really cool. The Son got to pluck one off and look at it under a microscope, that was big fun to him and I must admit, it was pretty interesting to me as well. 

So next time you buy mushroom at the grocery store, think of my little area of PA and take a look at the label and see if they were in fact grown around here... chances are, they will be!