The Maryland Renaissance Festival

My wife is a very huge fan of the Maryland Renaissance Festival. And that pretty much makes me one now by default, although I still shake my head in disbelief that people enjoy getting dressed up and pretending it still the time before hygiene, refrigeration and electricity.

The Maryland Renfest is probably one of the best in the country, and it will be open every weekend through October. They have beautiful wooded acres of land and very cool architecture like the “Rosie’s Posies” house below.

My wife is urging me to get my own costume too, and Im being a bit curmudgeony about it. No more jeans and sneakers for me, she keeps insisting. She was in full Renfest Garb (and she was really stunning too), and she wants me to play along and wear a costume too so she wont feel goofy being the only one of us dressed up.

I got the baggy pants on Sunday. They are forest green. Maybe I can blend into the Maryland woodlands. I need a shirt and boots and I’ll be set.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a blast when I go to Crownsville, MD, like I did this past Sunday. The food was great. Gnawing on a roasted turkey leg is one of my favorite things. The beer was really good. The mead? A little too dry and clear for my taste, but I drank that too and liked it! There were dozens of craftsmen and artists selling their artwork and pottery, and the actors and performers were outstanding entertainment.

But you know what I liked best about the Renfest? No, not all the well-defined cleavage protruding above tight bodices, although that was plentiful. The best part was the PEOPLE WATCHING! And not just watching visitors play “Drench the Wench” at the dunking booth or totally weak guys trying to hit the bell with the big sledge hammer and missing horribly. No, its the people that are either way too into playing dressup, or its the odd cliques of people who gather together at a picnic table.

The guy below was way into it, but he looked a little authentic. But he was obviously trying to be a “Mage.” I thought they burned people that practiced witchcraft at the stake during the Renaissance? Okay, Merlin was a mage, but that was just the legend of King Arthur, and that was supposed to happen in the Dark Ages. This type of mage has to figure out how many D6’s to roll to launch a fireball.

These two guys below struck me as odd too. One is a black knight and the other is some type of disfigured monk? They were blocking my path back to the Beer Stand.

And finally is the oddest collection of characters outside of World of Warcraft. We have a Goth Angel, a shirtless man and some sort of fox-tailed gent in a smoking section. All of the guys have hair that is really just way too long and no tans to speak of. The topic of conversation? “If hobbits really existed, what continent would they live on?”