Catchy title isn't it? Totally confused aren't you? So were we when we first heard this, but its exactly what we sent to see. The Running of the Gourds.
This weekend, in the next town over, Eloy, the Wuertz Farm 5th Annual Gourd Festival was taking place so we decided to go for a look. I took tons of pictures so this post may be broken down into several sections because of the many photos.
We left our park around 1 and made the 10 mile drive in no time at all. We found a parking place easily and made our way into the Pinal County Fairgrounds.
In the picture above you can see a lot of people waiting in line and it was a long line! Inside this building the "best of the best" are on display. More about this later.
The first thing we saw when we inside the fairgrounds was thousands of "raw" gourds.
They come in all shapes and sizes and every shape has a particular name.
People were buying these things by the bagful. BIG bagfuls.
This was a popular place for picture taking. This "cow" is made out of gourds!
There were gourd games for the little guys to play.
The body of the "football player" is a gourd!
There was lots of places to get something to eat while there.
It was time to get down to the business at hand and find out what was so special about these gourds.
Well, let me tell you, we had no idea. This is a huge business! Between the gourds themselves, the tools needed to do the projects, the paint, the varnishes, the books, the patterns, it is just unbelievable. All this for a funny shaped object that probably 99% of you never a gave a second thought about unless it was Halloween and you bought some at the market for decoration. Well, its not those kind of gourds. Follow along, I'm going to show you some amazing things!
With the exception of the painted background and of course, the dirt, everything in this picture is made from gourds.
This snake is a gourd too. As is the rat.
Hummingbird, you guess it, a gourd.
Looks real doesn't it?
A familiar figure in these parts, a kokopelli.
Gourds can even be dressed!
Some the gourds were just beautiful! I had to wonder how many one had to do to get this good.
We saw lots of masks.
Some gourds were made into useful things like candleholders.
I wondered if all the people were just curious like we were or if they were serious "gourders". I don't know if they are really known as "gourders" it just sounds good to me.
Some gourds reflected the gourders passion,,,,besides gourds of course.
Some were really "out there"! I mean really, whoever heard of a purple dragon? Much less one made out of a gourd.
Gourds make great birdhouses. We even inherited one in the park model we just bought.
I especially liked this one.
A family of owls. I think they're owls anyway. Hmmm....maybe not.
Everywhere we looked baskets of gourds in a riot of colors.
In the midst of all this there was even entertainment.
The holiday times of year that one decorates for the season was NOT left out here!
Halloween was not to be left out.
Some gourders are into flowers.
Others were very much into animals.
Can you imagine the time it took to carve and paint this.
Birds were another interest.
Some gourds told it like it is....
and some were just really strange. Why would anyone even think to make this out of a gourd???? A jellyfish????
That's it for part one. This is going to take forever to load all the pics. Stand by for part two.
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