This year, we were blessed with free tickets to Floydfest. This local music festival has grown immensely over the last 8 years. We attended the festival the first few years as vendors, and haven't been in a couple of years. It was amazing to see how far it has come, and the progression of it all. It is truly a wonderful festival for people of all ages.
There are 7 stages around the festival grounds providing a variety of live music all day, and sometimes late into the night. There is a dance pavilion, and many free workshops offered including yoga, belly dance, juggling, hooping, drumming, Tai Quan Do and much more!
The festival grounds are absolutely beautiful! There are fountains and ponds, herb gardens and wildflowers everywhere. Not to mention, the natural beauty of the area. The festival is located just off the Blue ridge parkway, there are mountains and rolling hills surrounding the a festival grounds, woods to camp in and wild blackberries all along the trail to Global Village. Truly the best festival venue we've ever been to.
This year there was a small petting zoo in the Children's Universe. There was a camel, llamas and donkey. We loved the camel, and Sage spent quite a bit of time petting it and chatting with it.
One of my favorite parts of the festival is the Children's parade. The dress up tent is opened up, and all the kids chose or create costumes. The adults hold flags, balloons, hola hoops and other props and we all march along the festival grounds.
This year, right before the parade the sky opened up and the rain poured down! It was brief, but intense with thunder and lightening. We all huddled under the tent at the Kids stage waiting for it to pass. As soon as it ended a huge rainbow broke out over the Main stage.
The kids parade began, and we enjoyed the music of Donna the Buffalo while the parade marched on.
The kids universe offered all kinds of fun activities for the kids. The have a swing set, and giant wooden ship play structure. A large covered sandbox area, arts and crafts workshops, the dress up tent and the stage area with all kinds of workshops.
Sequoia really enjoyed the jugglers workshop, and Tai Quan Do workshop. The instructor was really good with the kids, he taught them a punch technique and then each child got to break a board a half with their punch. Sequoia was very pleased with himself, he broke the board on his first chop.
Sage loved the dress up tent, and chose several extremely amusing outfits through out the weekend. You can see more of our weekend in our Floydfest photo Album.
By the end of each evening the kids were wiped out!
Blues Traveler was the only band we actually sat through the whole set. The kids were passed out on our blanket, and we sat under the stars and enjoyed the music. It was awesome!
Sunday afternoon, the sky suddenly turned black and it quite obvious something nasty was on it's way. We packed up the tent, and headed to the shuttles as quickly as possible, but didn't make it. The rain came down hard and we got completely drenched. We returned wet, exhausted, but happy.
To see more Floydfest photos, and get a better feel for the entire festival (rather than just the Children's Universe) check out these amazing photos by Richard Cox photography. His pictures really seem to capture the beauty and energy of the festival.
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