Taylorsville Dayzz

Have discovered a new tradition, friends. And I'm almost reluctant to share it here because I don't want everyone to show up and take all the parking next time. But last weekend GH and I checked out a local summer offering. Lots of Utah towns have annual festivals (many revolve around agriculture in some way, such as Brigham City's Peach Days and Pleasant Grove's Strawberry Days). The festival in Taylorsville, UT is known as Taylorsville Dayzz. (And, yes, the "zz" concerned me initially, but it turned out to have been a needless concern. The "zz" is, in fact, how you know it's good.)

The festival lasted for four whole days, but we just went on Saturday evening. Here were a few of the things we experienced:

Free, on-site parking with ushers to direct you to empty spots and tell you which direction to park. Niiiiiiice.

Decent-looking carnival rides, which we did not take advantage of, and many food booths, which we did. Five bucks got me a big ol' funnel cake with powdered sugar, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, slivered almonds, and peanut butter chips on top. AW. YEAH.

Petting zoo complete with sweetest tiny baby goat ever seen in life. I stood by the fence and whimpered, begging GH to let me take it home with me. He said we could take home the pig instead. "But I don't want the pig, I want the precious baby goat *squeak whimper whine squeak burble*" I don't remember much after that; I might have blacked out.

Porta-potties called "Honey Pots." That is a gross name. What was not gross was that they had anti-bacterial gel dispensers inside each one, so that germophobe GH would continue to hold my hand and be near me after I used said pot in my desperate need to empty the whole 1.5 ounces of urine that were causing my bladder to darn near explode. (Thank you for that, small one.)

Beatles Tribute Band, backed up by the Taylorsville Symphony Orchestra. There was a huge crowd there for the concert, all sacked out on blankets and chairs. We sat behind the Family That GH Wants to Be in Twenty Years. Not only did they compliment him on his Captain Hammer Tshirt, but they and their teenaged kids were huge Beatles fans who sang along to all the songs. Was glad to have another friend with us so that she and I could nicely make fun of GH's Beatles fervor. (Also she showed me where the fist-pumps belong during Neil Diamond's "America," which leads us to . . . )

Thirty-minute long fireworks show, complete with music. We know how long it lasted because we timed the thing--which we will be doing forever now after the 8-minute travesty known as the crap fireworks of last year's Stadium of Fire in Provo (alternate name: Here's Hoping Carrie Underwood Will Be Enough to Distract You From How Much Our Fireworks Might Suck.) The Taylorsville fireworks show, though, was really impressive--they had a few things that I'd never seen before. And the music was great, too. They'd alternate between patriotic songs and then big crowd-pleasers like "Mamma Mia," "America," and "YMCA." One mistake I noticed was that over the course of the show they played the marches for the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, and . . . the Marines again. Not quite sure what happened there.

And? AND? Best part ever, when the fireworks were over we stood up, gathered our blankets, walked briskly to the car, started it up, and were out of that parking lot and out of town in about 4 minutes. It was the cherry on the sundae, I tell you.

So. Anybody out there have any local festival recommendations, or reason why your town's ------ Days is the best?

With that discussion question thrown out there, I'll just go ahead and wish everybody a Happy 4th of July weekend, with hopes that your foods will be plentiful and tasty and your fireworks will not suck.