Misty and her family picked up Shawnda in Knoxville, then stopped in Crossville to pick up Monica and Laurie to celebrate Monica's birthday at the Pickle Festival in Cookeville. (Monica loves pickles - dill pickles.)
The festival was “sponsored” by The Slice pizza restaurant. They had advertised a dill pickle pizza on the festival website, and we had thought that would be a fun thing to try for lunch. But it turned out, The Slice didn’t have a food truck or booth at the festival. They were handing out coupons for 50% off a dill pickle pizza, if you actually go to their restaurant.
It was a very nice day for the festival. Not hot at all. It was just a lot smaller than I was expecting. Basically what you see in this photo. There were a few food trucks parked off to the side that you can’t see. And a stage, on the other side of all these small tents, where they were holding the pickle eating contests. The annoying thing about that was that the announcer was up on the stage, but the contestants were standing on the ground, behind tables. It was very difficult to see what was going on. I held my phone way over my head to take pics and videos.
The pickle festival was kinda disappointing, actually. They promoted the heck out of it on FB and their website made it sound like “a big dill.” But it was nowhere close to the size of the banana pudding festival we went to a few weeks ago - I probably shouldn’t have got my hopes up about that. It was held on the athletic field of a middle school, so that right there tells you it was on a much smaller scale. There were not very many food trucks or food vendors, which was disappointing.
We got there around 12:30, thinking we could get lunch at a food truck or a vendor at a booth, but after we got inside we saw they only had a few food trucks set up, and the lines to get food at any of them were pretty long. And hardly any of the food at the food trucks or little vendors was particularly pickle-related.
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The 15th spoonful ….. not so much |
We tried the pickle jello, and we saw a lemonade stand offering pickle-flavored drinks. There were pickle cupcakes and pickle taffy. There was a booth set up for cotton candy, but the pickle flavor was sold out already - and it was only just after 12:30!! I settled for green apple flavor, because it was green, and brought it home for the girls - I thought I could try to trick them and tell them it’s pickle flavored, and see if they would be brave enough to try it.
There were several craft vendors there, including a couple of t-shirt vendors. I got a T-shirt for the festival.
The pickle eating contests were fun to watch - Monica had said she might enter the pickle juice drinking contest, but that wasn’t going to happen until later in the day. And there was barely enough going on to keep us there for more than an hour or so. It was still a fun time, though.
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The younger kids were eating pickle spears in their contest, I think. The bigger kids were eating huge fat whole dill pickles.
I hope Monica had a good birthday. I give her a lot of credit for being a “trooper” and trying to make the best of it. Monica didn’t want to be in any pictures. I did snap a pic of her and her sisters, but it’s not very good.
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her picture. Shawnda and Misty are behind her |
her huge fat dill pickle! |
Oh, I forgot to say, we went to Olive Garden to get some lunch, after we left the festival. Then we went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, for dessert.
I forgot to mention there was also one of those tiny helicopters giving tours, and a few bouncy houses. Probably next year’s will be bigger and better. It was pretty well attended … that might be why some of the vendors ran out of stuff so quick!
Reporter: Laurie Paulsen 
That's all for this time. Come back next month.
The Robinson Connection: Monica, is Laurie's friend. Shawnda and Misty are her sisters. The pickles have been consumed.