Watermelon festival in Nauvoo!

Thursday, the 27th, we drove over to Montrose, again...this time with the DeMordaunts to see the watermelon festival! We had heard there would be a BIG watermelon on display there that had won 1st prize in the Iowa State Fair. NOW THAT IS A BIG FAIR! This was just a little small town carnival and fair, but it was really fun to feel the excitment. This is probably the biggest thing in many of these people's lives!! The people here are so nice, though...we have NEVER met anyone yet who has not been really outgoing and kind to us...and they all know who we are because we have to dress like missionaries and wear our missionary tags where ever we go!

It was really a pretty good sized carnival for such a small town. It brought back lots of memories of the carnival that would come to Burley every year when the fair and rodeo were on.

Notice the Michelle's Corn Dogs sign. I doubt if you ever make corn dogs, do you, Michelle?

This was fun to watch. It was the Montrose Watermelon Princess contest. It looked like they were all young girls about 10-12 years old. They asked them all questions but then the winner was chosen by drawing the name out of the hat. The prizes were tickets for the rides on the carnival.

You could eat ALL THE WATERMELON you wanted FREE, OF COURSE! After all, this is the WATERMELON FESTIVAL! They were also having a watermelon eating contest, later, but we left because it started to rain....really pretty hard. No body seemed to mind, however and they just continued on riding the rides and playing the games. No one even put up an umbrella, except the 4 of us. I'm sure we looked rather strange!

I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, but they closed it down because to the rain...actually because of the lightning. They didn't close any of the other rides!! I haven't been on a Ferris wheel for years!!

Sister DeMordaunt and I. We certainly don't look like the other Fair goers, do we!!!

And here is the watermelon....all 179 pounds of it!! Pretty cool, huh?