Highland Festival

November 15, 2014

We went to the Highland Festival held at The Beauvoir, home of Pres. Jefferson Davis.

The grounds include his mansion and a presidential library. :0)

This mural of Jefferson Davis is on the side of the presidential library.

It makes me smile that he has his own library.

As we went inside the gift shop to get our tickets we saw several bird houses.

There are some really cool ones!

They have lots of cool things in the gift shop.

We got there just in time for the next parade.  They had several bagpipe players, drummers and color guard.  There were 5 or 6 different clans represented here.

This is the main tent where they made announcements and had performers.

Nathan and Dad loved the bagpipes.

See that Mom!

We also saw a group demonstrate a dance from yester year.

We stopped by one of the clan booths and saw a sword and battle ax.

Bradley got to hold the sword while the guy talked about the battle ax.

Then he let Daniel hold the battle ax.  Bradley wasn't sure about that!

They were really cool!

Another bagpipe player.  I love listening to the songs.

This man was doing a black smith demonstration.

He was pretty funny to listen to.

There was also a knife display set up on a table next to him. 

There were some really interesting blade designs.

We headed to the jousting grounds.  The squires were there with the horses and let us pet them.

We were excited to see the next show.

These are big horses!  The angle of the picture doesn't do them justice.

We had a while until the next jousting tournament, so we headed over to the sheep dog trials.

This is one of the boarder collies.

The man that did the demonstration works with these dogs everyday herding cattle and some sheep.

He said he has about 10 of different ages.

Letting the sheep out.

The man had three dogs out that he was trying to show us with.  They were all trained using different command calls.  That way he can work them all at the same time and still get them to do what he wants.  The only problem was that they all wanted to work the sheep at the same time, so he was having a hard time showing their skills one at a time.

Dad went and got us some lunch with Nathan.  By the time he came back Nathan was out!

We learned that working boarder collies are bread for their skill and stamina not for looks.

They are bread to run up to 70 miles a day!  No wonder Abby has a hard time not herding the horses.

This is a short haired collie.

When he would give a command to one dog the other would try to sneak over too.

It was kind of funny.  He asked if we ever got out into public and our kids tried to make us look stupid.  He says that is what his dogs do sometimes.  :0)

Rounding up the sheep and bringing them back.

Now he is demonstrating the whistle calls.  They respond to verbal commands and whistle commands.

The sheep stayed together to whole time.

Next we headed to the cemetery on the grounds.  Along the way we saw some kids trying their hand at hand to hand combat.  This poor guy got to fight kids all day.

He was a big dude!

We got a scone with strawberries.  It isn't like our traditional scones, but it was pretty tasty.

Daniel, Dad, Nathan, Bradley and Eliza

We passed a World War 2 table.  This guy had items a German soldier would have packed around with him.  It was pretty cool to hear about each of the items.  The periodically do war demonstrations down here.  The next one is in Dec.

Talking about the hand gun.

These gardens are just outside the cemetery.  I am sure they would be gorgeous in the spring.

As we walked into the cemetery we were greeted by this camel.  The only reason we dared approach it was because there were already people over petting it.

He just stood there and let people pet him.  It was awesome!

Have you ever  wanted a camel hair blanket.  I didn't until I pet this camel!  Now I might want one.

It was a big camel!

His feet were the size of dinner plates!!  I guess that helps them walk on the sand.

Next we saw a few of minis...

Eliza like this one.  She was super sweet.

Nathan also found a llama!

He thought this mini goat was cute...

until it moved and then he was a little nervous of it's horns.

This mini donkey hung out with the pony.

Daniel checking out the llama.

Another mini goat.

Bradley and Nathan with the llama.

A mini Zebu!

Doesn't look too big when Dad is next to it.

Two cute boys and a Zebu!

Andy trying to decide how close to the llama to get.

He laid there and let everyone pet him.

Heading over to the graveyard part.

This is the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Even though the Confederate States didn't win they still show respect for their soldiers.

Some of the headstones were really old and others were as early as the 80's.

Exploring the stones.

There were several confederate flags disperse among the graves.

I though this one had a pretty unique nick name.

This is where Jefferson Davis' father is buried.

After the cemetery we headed for the jousting!

First knight mounting up!

Second knight mounting up.

In armor these men weigh between 350-500 pounds!

You can see why they would need a big horse.

This was the announcer/entertainer! Apparently there is a reality TV show about jousting.  These guys are from that show.  The knights that jousted for us competed in the show. 

Here he is introducing the knights to the teams.

We were on the south side, so we cheered for the knight from the USA.

He is one of the winning competitors off of the show.

This knight is from Canada and his cheering section was on the north side.

The horse he road is also from the TV series.

Each knight bestowed a rose to a fair maiden.

This is the fair maiden our knight picked.

To start the jousting each knight had to demonstrate their skills in 3 events.  First they had to spear a circle held by a squire with a javelin, then throw the javelin into a bale of hay.  They had three chances to see how close to the center of the target.  The closest would win the round.   

Our knight won the first skill challenge!  He got to throw "gold" coins to the crowd. 

The gold coins were Wherthers candies.

The next challenge was to kit this plate on the end of the pole and see how many times it went around.  The each got 3 attempts.

Our knight won again!

Yeah team USA!!

The last challenge was to run past this unfortunate squire and cut the melon on top of his head.

The knight to cut the closest to his head, without hitting his head, would win.

Our knight went first, but didn't win.  Bradley still got a fist bump though.

Then onto the main event!

Let the jousting begin!!

Points were given to the knight that had a clean hit.  If the jousting pole breaks more points are awarded.  Our knight won the jousting!

The sound of the jousting poles hitting the metal armor was loud!

There is definitely a LOT of force behind each hit!

It was fun to see live jousting.  I wouldn't recommend being a participant, but being in the audience is pretty cool!  The horses are amazing too.  The horses they used were Percheron, but they do have a few Clydesdale in their herd.