At the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival

Each year my family meets up for a final camping outing by visiting the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. The festival began in 1990, with an attendance of 425 garlic lovers. From that modest beginning, this year's attendance reached 53,000 visitors over two days. I can tell you first hand, we were glad we beat out the largest of the crowds, as we arrived at about 11:00am on Saturday and departed by about 2:30pm. As we drove away from the festival, mile after mile of cars lined the roads...

The power of garlic.

*

One of my first stops at the festival is the Boy Scouts tent, where I indulge in a garlic beef-on-a-stick as an appetizer.

There were about three or four bands playing in different areas of the Festival.

By about noontime, the crowds began to pack the festival streets.

Most garlic growers also had taste testing available for curious visitors.

There was garlic shrimp and garlic chowder...

...garlic & pork sandwiches...

...and even garlic ice cream (which I passed on).

There were non-garlic offerings, as well. I tried out the Jambalaya at this place.
It was delicious!

Other freshly-harvested alternatives to garlic included these peppers.

There were also several gift and souvenir vendors.


Wherever I go in my travels, I always try to pick up the local weekly newspaper. On this weekend, I found two such papers, both published by Ulster Publishing. The Woodstock Times had a feature story on - what else? - a marijuana bust. While the Saugerties Times had a sobering story on a local murder. The Saugerties Times also had a guide to the weekend's Garlic Festival. Surprisingly - since I'm used to the free papers in these parts (The Reminder and Valley Advocate) - neither weekly paper was free. The Woodstock Times was $1.00 and the Saugerties Times sold for 75 cents.

I also picked up a Garlic Festival program, which was selling for a mere 25 cents.

My purchases at the festival included a lot of food, plus a festival t-shirt and a tub of garlic cheese and a bottle of Bear-Man barbecue sauce.

Below is a short video I took while walking around the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival...



There are also more photos to see over at Flickr. You can see them all by clicking HERE.

*

Also, for anyone interested, I stopped by the Eastern States Exposition on Friday, September 28th, and did a little piece, including a video, for my other blog, The Springfield Intruder. You can check that out HERE.