Lumberjacks!

We first heard about Timbersports on the Colbert Report last year.

I thought the whole thing was oddly fascinating in the same way that I’m intrigued by traditional aspects of small town Utah life like rodeos and parades. I didn’t grow up in Utah and to be honest I don’t want to live here forever. But I like experiencing the local flavor while I have the chance.

And I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for festivals. So on Saturday I took E and went with my mom, brother, and nephews to the wild outdoors festival.

The lumberjack part of the festival turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. They were taping it for ESPN and so there was a lot of waiting around for the cameras to get set up. I was hoping to see the events where the competitors climb up super tall poles or balance on floating log booms but we only saw them chopping logs in half with hand axes. Which I guess is actually pretty impressive, but was kind of meh to watch.

Manly men at work.

The best part of the event were the Splash Dogs, dogs that competed to jump the longest distance into a pool of water. E loves dogs and freaked out in joy every time he saw one jump.

On of the splash dogs in mid jump.

A splash puppy in training.

There were a couple of other things to do beside watch the dogs and lumberjacks.

Cowboy A in training.

J taking a turn at the bow.

Wrapping it up and heading home.

It was fun, but I probably won’t go again unless they drop the price. It was $15 for adults, $10 for kids which was simply way too much. The mechanical bull, the archery station and the splash dogs were pretty much all there was to do and watch besides the timbersports. More than a third of the grounds were devoted to showcasing boats and tents and other merchandise that we weren’t interested in. To be fair, I don’t think we were really the target demographic but I still think admission should have been half the price they were charging.

Maybe we’ll have more luck at some of the other festivals this summer. There’s a Scottish Festival this coming up weekend and tickets are more reasonably priced. Maybe I can talk N into going–we’ll see.