Garlic Festival in Kettle Falls

Last Sunday we went with some friends of ours to China Bend Winery in Kettle Falls for a garlic festival. The advertisement for it said there would be food, arts, crafts, live music and wine tasting. It boasted about it's organic wines and foods. We asked our friends Heather and Paul Crooks to go with us. They like garlic and it had been awhile since the four of us got together without children. It turned into a three hour car ride one way. That was fine. We had great conversations and I thought the car ride went pretty quickly. As we are driving the last 21 miles to the winery, we were noticing that we did not passed a single car. Probably not a good sign. By the time we got to the winery we all needed barf bags because the road was bumpy and curvy. First we walk down the road from the parking and we come to a "Security Man" collecting $5.00 entry fee. (O.K. the magazine didn't say anything about that, but oh well) You can go to my link for Girl Power and Heather has all the photos of the day, but it was like we had walked straight back to the 60's. Tie die and dread locks everywhere. There were only two food booths, which weren't all that great and then two booths had been set up with garlic items. There was a lady doing massage and a man telling people their futures. The live music left little to be desired. All this being said, we had a great time. I know that sounds weird, but we just made the most of it. We laughed a lot, drank some good wine, (don't worry Steve didn't) and made some great memories. Steve tucked Million dollar bill tracks behind some of their posters for future events, and some kids got ahold of it and took it all over the place showing them to people. At one point Paul and Steve headed over to the Fortune Teller to see if they could witness to him. Make sure to check out Heather's blog with the pictures. We positioned ourselves in some of the pictures so we could see the Hippies in the background. :)

We decided to go to dinner on the way home and were going to stop at a Mexican place in Chewelah that Steve and I had eaten at before, but it was closed. The only other place that was open other than McDonald's was a bar and grill called the Sportsman. We were pleasantly surprised. The food was great and the man serving us was from Ephrata PA 20 minutes from where Steve grew up. That was pretty cool.

Thanks Paul and Heather for being such good sports. Next time we do something like this we'll check into it a little more. Kristin says her friend Evan could have told us it would have been like that. (His parents live in Kettle Falls.) But I don't know that I would have changed the day. We really enjoyed hanging out with you guys, and it was an experience we may never have again with some great laughs! Glad we were able to have them with you!