On Saturday morning my husband declared he had a surprise. A Halloween surprise!
After driving North for little more than an hour we wound up in Keene New Hampshire- which turns out is home of the pumpkin festival. We'd never been before and I've seriously never seen anything like it in my life. Every year in October the small downtown is overrun by jack-o-lanterns in hopes of breaking a world record. Everywhere you look there are pumpkins people have carved, they are on the sidewalk, in the trees, on the fountains, in front of stores, set up on rows of wooden shelving lining the street and on not one but two giant scaffolding sets.
I don't think I can accurately describe the pure joy I felt at seeing this many pumpkins and this much love for the carved pumpkin in one place. It was quite simply surreal.
And once the sun faded away it was jaw dropping.
For a while Keene held the world record until it was beat by Boston (that fact that it took Boston to beat them is pretty impressive if you check out the population numbers 22,600 in Keene and somewhere around 600,000 in Boston). This year's festival clocked in 29,068 pumpkins a little shy of the world record held by Boston (which 30,128) but a personal best for the festival.
Over 29,000 pumpkins... I'm still grinning about it.
Someone pinch me so I can make sure it was real. What an awesome Saturday surprise! We'll absolutely be back with a lighter and jack-o-lantern in hand!
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