Maine and Beyond: Old Hallowell Day and The Clam Festival

It's hard to keep up with reporting on all our Summer activities, but it's worth a blurb on our recent festival fun.

In our experience, nothing in Maine (yet) has actually been crowded. There's just not enough people living in the state to amass what the rest of us call a crowd. The Clam Festival and parade are hosted in a neighboring town to ours called Yarmouth. I'm guessing the population of Yarmouth is around 3,500. The Clam Festival boast crowds of over 100,000 (but that's over several days). The week prior to the parade and festival I watched the set-up occur as we drove through town. First the tents went up for the food and craft vendors, the carnival arrived and began their own set-up, and most surprisingly, lawn chairs also began to dot the sides of the road of the parade route. The chairs began to show up on Sunday; The festival kicked off Thursday, but the parade wasn't until Friday. I was definitely impressed with the early chair set-up, but also intimidated. Would there really be that many people that you needed to reserve a spot?

Fast forward to Friday. We kicked off the weekend festivities at 6PM with the 45th Annual Clam Festival parade. Patrick came home from work early and actually had to drive 10 miles out of his way just to get home since all the streets were already blocked off for the parade. We gathered the kids and raced off to the parade, not knowing how difficult it would be to park and to find a spot to sit; afterall, by that morning, chairs lined the ENTIRE route of the parade on both sides of the street.

In step with our experience in Maine, despite the crowds (and this may have been the first real crowd we've seen in Maine) we were able to find parking just a couple blocks away. We came prepared to move fast with a stroller ride for all three kids. We pulled up and wiggled our way into a nice spot on a driveway just as the hour long parade kicked off. We saw our share of beauty queens (or princesses according to Lexi), firetrucks, mini go-cart themed cars, and some pretty bad floats. The kids loved it all and Heath was particularly excited.

Looking for what's next in the parade. You can see the crowds across the street here.

Heath enjoying the view from above.

Post parade, the crowds dissipated easily. No traffic jams. We left promising the kids we'd be back later in the weekend to attend the rest of the festival, including the carnival rides. In and out unscathed--the way life should be - that's Maine for you.

The next day we headed North early in the morning to Hallowell to visit with Jen, Jess and Sam and attend Old Hallowell Day. We'd been invited to ride in the trolley in their parade and Finn and Lexi were very excited about the opportunity. Not only would they be able to ride in a parade and wave to everyone, but in this parade, all the parade participants get to throw candy, adding to the anticipation. As the adult riding along, I have to say that throwing candy is pretty awesome and it made the ride and waving to complete strangers pretty fun actually.

Trolley ride - Jen and Sam

Candy was enjoyed inside the trolley too!

Waving to Jess from the trolley (yes, it's me. I'm actually appearing in a picture!)

Heath and Dad watching from the sidelines

Post trolley ride watching the parade.

Sam and Jess

It was hot, hot so we all left the parade and headed back to Jen and Jess' house for some relief. The slip-and-slide and pool were pulled out and the kids had a blast. It turned into what I may call Finn's best day ever. You can tell by the look on his face how much fun he was having. Keep in mind that Finny is usually too cold to do any water activity no matter how hot it may be.

I apologize that there are so many photos, but I wanted to try to capture just how much fun Finn had!

Sunday we all met up again to attend the Clam Festival and carnival. The "big" kids all had a chance to go on some rides. Finn, again, was in heaven for the chance to "drive" a "real" car.