This past weekend was the North Carolina Apple Festival in Hendersonville. On Saturday we decided head down and spend the day exploring the town and all it has to offer since many places were holding open houses or special exhibits. We parked at the street fair first. To be honest, I am not a street fair kind of girl. Way too many people. Too much junk being sold. And very little of the old time festival festivities left. But we wanted to see the downtown and the Mineral and Lapidary Museum was on Main Street where the street fair was being held.
We stopped and ate our picnic lunch on the steps of a building and walked the length of Main Street before heading back to the museum. It was small and very crowded, but it had a lot on display. The first thing the kids saw was the T-Rex head. And Lakin was very interested in the Smilodon Skull and other saber toothed cat replicas (he's always had a thing for saber toothed cats).
They had geodes you could purchase and have cracked open using this machine. It was fun to watch and the geodes were beautiful. The boys all wanted one, but at $15 for a small and $40 for a large, we had to pass.
They also had a case dedicated to rocks and minerals found in North Carolina. We'll have to check out and see if we can find some local places to go dig for some!
And if you ask Cale, the highlight of the day was Kilwin's. He found a listing for Kilwin's in Asheville and has been asking to go ever since. So when we passed by the store he really wanted to go in.
Once we had been walking in the heat for awhile we stopped in for ice cream. 5 cones, a caramel apple and some fudge samples later we were back on the side walk to enjoy our treats
Once we were done at the street fair we headed down the road a bit to check out a small antique car show. It was really small- we got there a bit late. But sometimes small and not crowded can be a good thing.
One couple let the kids sit in their 1923 car and showed them how the top went up and down. Told them about the engine, where the gas tank was, how the pedals worked.
They tried out the horns of a few of the cars and explored the different engines. There were only about 6 or 7 cars, but still interesting and fun for the us to see.
Annika loved sitting up in the car and didn't want to leave when it was time to move on. It was getting late and we had a couple more stops before heading home....
It's the Energizer Bunny! Here it is (nearly) full of air. It had just lifted and only the drum still hadn't inflated. The one next to it, The Mayflower, was having some technical difficulties as well. It took off a little bit real low to the ground and got out over the water. It was still tetherd to the van and had a few men pulling ropes but they couldn't get it back over land. It dipped into the water 3-4 times and almost ran into the fountain.
That's about the only shot of them I got. I didn't have enough battery power to snap away like I usually do. There were 23 balloons total. The 3 they were giving tethered balloon rides from went down before the glow. And 3 inflated but must have had some sort of trouble because they deflated and packed them back up before the glow began...they did still participate by blasting their flames from the baskets, just no balloon. 
