So I have to be honest, part of the reason we went to the pickle festival is so I could name this blog “first time at a pickle festival”.  I mean seriously the jokes write themselves!!  (No, they don’t. I write the jokes.-Lee) I did want to go though. (I did not.)  I love small festivals and Winchester is very close to our campground. (Dangerously close. So close it’s really impossible to get lost between here and the pickle festival.) We’ve talked about going for several years but something always got in the way so it was great to just go and have a good time.   The place was packed.  Winchester, NH is a tiny town and has one main street.  We found a parking space, with some difficulty, and walked down the side of the street the festival was on.

Basically it was a small group of tents with food and some locally made items for sale.  The festival was disappointingly short on pickle themed activities, they could have had a lot of fun with that, but there was a bouncy house area for kids and even some pony rides.  It seemed like the entire town turned out and the kids were definitely having a good time.  (They don’t know any better.) The prices were also reasonable for the food items and all of the vendors were local non-profit organizations trying to raise funds, which I always like.

 

 

One of the coolest things was they had several baskets that local non-profits were raffling off as a fundraiser.  They were nice baskets and the tickets were $1 each so they were very reasonably priced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The absolute best part was the local library had a “Fill A Bag For $4” book sale and I cleaned up on old cookbooks.  (I loaded up on WWII and Cold War material. Everyone wins.) As I have mentioned before I love unusual cookbooks and I found several that I have never seen before, and you can’t beat the price.  Plus, it was an absolutely beautiful day…sunny with a temperature in the 80’s which is highly unusual in late September here.  (I spent most of my time looking for small patches of pickle-free shade) I mean, we have had snow on October 1st on more than one occasion so it was exciting to see such a pretty day.  Oh, and when we were at the library we ran into my friend Jim and his barbershop quartet. Their singing was beautiful and it was so nice to see him. Overall it was a nice festival although I don’t think I would make a special trip to see it, but I did enjoy the small town vibe. (It’s worth noting that we saw the entire thing in about an hour. And most of that time was spent in the library looking through books. This is not a big festival. This isn’t even a festival. But there were pickles.)

On the way home from the pickle festival we stopped at the Ashuelot River Campground to check it out.  We need to move our rig on November 1st and Swanzey Lake Camping Area only offers winter storage with no access mid-winter which won’t work for us. Ashuelot has a new owner and he was very interested in working with us for both staying in a seasonal site the month of Nov (at a reduced rate) and month-to-month storage for the winter.  They had a site with very easy access right near the front so it could easily be plowed to if we needed to get to the camper for any reason.  The owner is going to talk to his wife about pricing since they’re still new at this, but I got a good feel from the place and it’s great to have options other than putting it in a storage area somewhere where we can’t get to it if we want to go somewhere in the winter.

Also this weekend we saw lots of house sale activity.  We dropped the price another $10K this week and that seems to have put us in a new category.  Friday we had a showing and Saturday four groups came to our open house.  On Sunday Lee and I had separate plans for the day. He went to the house to mow and do some laundry and I had lunch with our daughter Kyrston.  While Lee was at the house a family came because they thought the open house was on Sunday.  I have to say the fact that Lee was there when they came was a VERY fortunate coincidence and they spent 1-1/2 hours going through the house.  Lee was there to answer all their questions and I feel really really good about our chances of having a sale in the near future…fingers crossed!! We are trying not to get too excited though, because we’ve had good showings with no offers before… so we continue to wait.  We did have a great steak dinner and I made a new baked apple recipe that tasted pretty good and I think will be super fun for kids to make.  See below for the recipe.  And no matter what happens with the sale, we try to focus on the fact that we have our health, we are employed, and we love each other.  It will happen when it’s meant to happen.  I will be honest though, I have a really good feeling.

Foil Grilled Apple

• 1 Large Baking Apple
• 2tsp butter
• 2 tbl sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• Aluminum foil, heavy-duty

1.  Core each apple to within 1/2 inch of bottom (I did this with a small paring knife)

2.  Fill the hole in the apple with 1 tsp butter

3.  Combine sugar and cinnamon and put in hole

4.  Add 1 tsp butter on top of sugar/cinnamon mixture

5.  Wrap in heavy-duty foil

6  Place upright on low-medium coals for 25-30 minutes until soft

7.  Unwrap and eat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooked apple

————————————————————————————————————————————-

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.  Search Amazon.com here