For Your Bucket List

Ok, I cannot handle seriousness all the time here on the blog, so this week’s post is something different, something fun. 

Something for your Bucket List.  

Yep, I want to help you with that all important list of lists.  First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page.  A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket.”   You have one don’t you?  If you don’t, that’s ok, I’m here to help you get started.   

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Being an amateur sociologist, I love anything and everything about cultures.  So when I stumbled upon a trivia question about the Lumberjack World Championships, and the Okie Noodling Festival…I was hooked.

In a heartbeat I was planning future family vacations, and “googling”. Here, I must confess that I was very disappointed, to learn that the Okie Noodling Festival has nothing to do with pasta.  I love pasta.  Don’t you?  But no, it’s actually about catching catfish your bare hands.   *crosses that one off the list*

Not deterred by that minor setback, I began searching for other interesting festivals to visit.  Visiting all 50 states is already on my Bucket List, so why not visit a cool festival while I am there, right?

I found a very helpful website, festivals.com that gave me info about festivals all over the US.  Most festivals appear to revolve around music.  That’s cool, I like music, but I was looking for something a little more unusual like lumberjacks and well, you know, pasta.

So the search continued.  I reasoned that perhaps it would be helpful to start close to home.  Easier on the budget and all that, so I searched for “Montana festivals” with the Marie Osmond/Dan Seals song, “Meet me in Montana” playing on the radio of my mind.  And I gotta tell ya, Montana has a festival that should be on everyone’s Bucket List.  How could we possibly have lived this long without experiencing it?  Do you have a pen and paper handy?  Cause you don’t want to miss this…

It’s the Testicle Festival.  I’m so not kidding.  That is actually what it is called.  It’s all about Rocky Mountain Oysters served with cowboy beans.  They boast of two and a half tons of this gourmet food being served along with music and adult activities.  Hmmm. . .(crossing another one off the List, where’s the pasta?).

Then I thought perhaps I should check the South West (my family lives there, I could kill two birds and all that...).  And I found the Festival of Festivals.  Get your pencil (yeah really!)  It's the:

Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup

Oh yeah!  The festival begins with Bouny Hunters who for $5 lb round up rattle snakes, straight from their dens.  Then they "milk" them, which in this case has nothing to do with mammary glands.  Once they are milked they hold them out for the audience to see...and touch!   

There is a "lion-tamer" type show where they demonstrate irritating a rattler and how fast they can strike.  That sounds safe, right? Bad day for the snakes, who are taken off set, as it were and killed. They are then returned and skinned before a live audience.  The skins and meat are sold to happy buyers. All this for only a $6 entrance fee.   We've already missed it this year, sorry about that!  But you can see pictures HERE.

And here's a little something for your fridge:

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I have to be honest, snakes squick me out…so I might be better off sticking with festivals.coms and the music festivals.  To be fair, they also listed cultural festivals and historical rendezvous’ that sounded fascinating.  I’d list them, but honestly- there were too many, and they just weren’t funny (criminal isn’t it?)  But do check them out for your list.

And if you know of any “don’t miss” festivals, be sure and let me know.  Particularly, if pasta is involved.