Kite Festival

Last weekend we headed south for the first annual Spanish Fork Kite Festival, held to celebrate the completion of the new "wind farm" at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. We weren't really sure what to expect (it was the first annual, after all), but we figured that, at the very least, it would be a great location for a kite festival. The wind is always blowing up there . . .

A little while back, Janae picked up this nifty Elmo kite for about 80 cents at K-mart. Anyone who has spent more than two minutes with Ainslie in the last month or so knows that she gets pretty excited about Elmo on the TV, computer, doodle pad, coloring books . . . and this kite was every bit as awesome.
Janae helped her get it going . . . Turns out, Elmo was a great kite, and we all had fun taking turns with the kite.
Josh got it to fly clear to the end of the string. Right next to the public kite flying area, there were some professional kite flyers. Ainslie loved watching the big, fancy kites. Her favorites were the "kitty" and "fsh fsh fsh" kites that were getting pulled around by four wheelers.

It was lots of fun to see all of the cool kites. Over on the little reservoir they had some great trick kites that were being pulled by a wave runner.

There were also lots of windmill-esque decorations all over the place. Ainslie was pretty excited to say hello to this fish. She loves fish, almost as much as she loves Elmo.
There were lots of friendly city employees who were offering golf cart rides to get from the bottom of the hill (where the kite flying was) to the top of the hill (where the promotional booths were). We were probably a little too happy to skip out on walking up the hill . . .
We definitely thought the kites were fun, but the best part of the festival may have been the free Segway rides! Josh has been trying to figure out how to test drive one of these for quite some time now, so when we heard that the demos at the festival for free we knew we had to do it.

It's a bit awkward at first trying to figure out how to manuever one of these, but they turned out to be a lot of fun. Even Grandma Jan gave it a try. Ainslie was a little too small, so she just worked on her yoga moves while we took turns on the Segways.
They called it the "first annual" kite festival, so we think that means it will be back next year. And if it does come back, we'll be excited to go again.