Weekend, part I

I have been wanting to go downtown to the weekly Farmer's Market at Pioneer Park for several weeks now and I finally made it there. KJ and I put on our most comfortable walking shoes and coolest clothing (temperature-wise) and spent a couple of hours mixing and mingling with crowds of Saturday shoppers. For those that don't know SLC, Pioneer Park in downtown is about the most scary park in the city. Typically you would only go there if you wanted some drugs or you were a homeless male and needed some where to sleep. Most people avoid that place for major safety reasons but amazingly enough once a week it becomes the "it" place to hang out. There were probably about 50 separate booths selling everything from vegetables to fruits to nuts to artisian breads to honeys to plants and herbs to farm fresh eggs. And then there were another 20 or so booths selling prepared foods; everything from cupcakes to roasted almonds to slushies to Kenyan cuisine (looked a little too authentic for me). I loved the booth in the second photo that had the most unique vegetarian dishes with sprouts and pine nuts and everything looked so fresh and healthy. Then there were probably another 100 booths selling arts and crafts: jewelry, metal sculputres, knitted goods, aprons, tye dyed items -- even marshmellow guns (KJ bought 2). That was only half of the entertainment -- the other half was provided by the people that we observed as we strolled along. We kept running into this "python guy" and it was a little creepy. I finally tapped him on the shoulder and asked if I could take his photo and he readily agreed and started walking towards me -- I told him I could zoom in just fine -- whoa, people and their pets. By the time we had perused every booth, my bag was so full and heavy that it took both KJ and I each holding a strap to get it back to the car. What a fun outing! If you have a farmer's market by you, I highly recommend that you check it out.