A few weeks ago before we headed up to Rhode Island for our camping trip, we were looking through a book of other possible New England destinations and we read about an oyster festival in Norwalk that was scheduled in September. We've been crazy over oysters during these past months and made a mental note to not forget about the festival once the date drew nearer.
One can't simply walk up and enter an event like this, tickets need to be purchased online beforehand at five dollars per person. Actually, I'm sure you can buy one on the spot as well. The festival spanned over three days; starting on a Friday night and ending on Sunday, at the Veteran's Memorial Park State Park in Norwalk, CT. Our weekend was rather booked up, so we decided we would go on Friday night in which the start time was 6pm and it would end around 11pm. Norwalk is only an hour drive so we weren't in a rush to go, but ideally I think we should've left around 5pm in case there was any traffic or if we would happened to get lost somewhere along the way. Since she was watching a TV show she wanted to finish, we ended up not leaving until nearly 6:30pm. I needed to get gas before hitting the highway, so I pulled into the gas station near me that was crowded with many other cars with something to do on a Friday night. It felt like a struck gold when there was an open pump, I swiped my debit card, hit the button for regular gas, and then nothing, no gas. A little befuddled, I went through the process again and got the same result, no gas was coming out. All this time other cars were pulling into the station and there were lines at all the other pumps. It was a small screenshot of what it must have looked like during the gas shortage of the 1970's. I was in no mood to play bumper cars and jockey for position at another pump, so I decided to leave this gas station and go to a less hectic one five minutes away.
Getting to this next gas station was taking forever; red lights, idiot double-parkers, slow buses, it was real torture. Finally I arrived at the next gas station and found myself a gas pump that did what is supposed to do and disperse gasoline. After filling up the tank we took to the I-95 north up towards Connecticut and found the roads quite open and free from other vehicles. It was one of the first times in a long time I didn't encounter traffic when going north on the 95. Things were going good until the halfway point when I realized the Google directions I printed out was for the Veteran's Memorial State Park in Bridgeport, not Norwalk. Apparently, there's about a million "Veteran's Memorial State Parks" all across the United States. Luckily she had her Blackberry phone equipped with GPS map to help guide us towards the right way, but I blew the first direction from the phone and missed the exit we were supposed to get off. Getting off at the next exit, going south on the 95, getting off again, and then heading north to reach this correct exit added a nice twelve minutes to our ride and it was seeming as if we would never get to the festival as the slowly turned to darkness. I got off the correct exit eventually and was doing quite well on taking the right streets to get us where the festival was. It was only on that final turn we had to make that a police car was stationed there and directed motorists to turn the other way - yet another diversion from letting us go where we needed to go. I ended up going the way the cops directed us and took some back residential streets to find myself at another street blocked off by police. The difference this time was the festival was in view from the marina we were at and the cop informed us this was as close as we could get with our car and that we could park anywhere near by. The found a tiny street blacked out from a lack of street lights and make the ten-minute walk to the park.
Once we presented our tickets at the gate we were stamped on the hand with the letters "OY", I'm guessing short for oysters. Upon reading about the oyster festival I thought it was going to be some type of large venue of different restaurants and eateries selling oysters in which enthusiasts such as ourselves could compare and contrast. When we got there is was more of a amusement park with carnival rides and games. Technically there were oysters and other types of seafood present, but it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Even though we were there finally, a new challenge emerged when a slight rain started to trickle from the sky. We found a tent area where all sorts of shopkeepers were selling their items and figured without an umbrella, it would be the smartest place to find cover from the rain. There was one lady's tent that specialized in chocolate, and what they did was shape it into things one would find by the beach, such as star fish and oysters. All chocolate packages were five dollars and we went with the white chocolate star fish. Once the rain let up a bit, we ventured over to the food area in search of our quest for oysters. Although we were happy to find where they were selling the oysters and clams, we were delighted to see stands for other great-smelling food such as BBQ, fried pizza, and even lobster. It was a little bizarre the way some of the stands were organized financially. Some of them you paid cash right at the stand, other you had to buy tickets for, and then present the ticket at the stand to get the food. For the raw bar, each ticket was seven dollars, and you could either get six clams or five oysters with it. We bought two tickets for fourteen and had both oysters and clams. The clams were little necks though, not the big juicy cherry stones we prefer. The oysters were the winner between the two and were at just the right size and flavor.
The next stop in the food court was a stand for Jack's Down Home Barbecue. They had their grill right next to the register and the smell from the ribs cooking were making the people on line wishing it would move faster so they can have their turn to order. Also presented was the various awards and metals Jack's had won over the years from different BBQ contests. We took a half-rack, consisting of six ribs, and squirted some extra BBQ sauce on the side in case we needed it. The last visit before finally eating was to get our lobster. A bargain at only fifteen dollars, we also took a corn on the cob and a lemonade to wash it down with for a grand total of nineteen dollars. There's not many lobster meals out there these days for under twenty bucks. I don't know how they did it, but the lobster was cooked in such a way that the shell peeled right off without having to use a nutcracker. A big tent with tables (and no chairs) were available for people to eat at, plus some haystacks positioned at the side of the tent were there and some people were using those to sit down and eat their meal. I've only seen haystacks in the movies and don't recall ever having one in front of me person. I don't know what it feels like or even how heavy could it be. Those thoughts were shuffled aside and I had more important things to tend to such as ribs and lobster. The ribs were cooked to perfection and the softened meat came off the bone so easily. I could understand how there were able to win all those BBQ awards over the years.
When we were done we strolled over to some of the other tents we missed on our way over to the food court area. One of them had German flags flapping in the clear air as the rainfall had completely stopped by them. The stand was for Heitmann's Nuts and they sold just about every candy imaginable such as taffy, gummy bears, chocolate, nuts, and more. My belly was quite full and I didn't feel like adding any candy to the mix, so to satisfy my sweet tooth I bought a pair of blueberry lollypops for three dollars. A stand not too far away from that one had cannolis which was very tough to resist, but I did. There was a tent for about any subject matter; from pickles, which I found gross, to dog food and free bibles. Done with the tents we walked to the section that had all the carnival rides, and by this time as the night grew on, more packs of teenagers with their melodramatic lives began filling the park. Our bellies were still way too full to even contemplate going on any rides and those traveling amusement park rides tend to throw people fifty yards up towards the moon once in a while. Two separate bands played far apart from each other. One band set up under a tent and rocked out in front of a capacity crowd of fifteen people. The other band had the big stage and played in front of a more decently-sized crowd, forty, with two hundred seats around them empty. As we were walking in circles two times looking for the exit, we came upon a few of the haystacks again and I couldn't resist getting up close and personal with them before leaving the park. I sat on one for a few seconds and was thoroughly impressed with it as an option for a seat. Had I known, it would've made the lobster and ribs taste that much better. I'm not sure when I'll ever get a chance to meet up with a haystack again, but next time I'm certainly not hesitating making their acquaintance.
When obstacles get in your way, a haystack will be your prize at the end of the struggle.....
One can't simply walk up and enter an event like this, tickets need to be purchased online beforehand at five dollars per person. Actually, I'm sure you can buy one on the spot as well. The festival spanned over three days; starting on a Friday night and ending on Sunday, at the Veteran's Memorial Park State Park in Norwalk, CT. Our weekend was rather booked up, so we decided we would go on Friday night in which the start time was 6pm and it would end around 11pm. Norwalk is only an hour drive so we weren't in a rush to go, but ideally I think we should've left around 5pm in case there was any traffic or if we would happened to get lost somewhere along the way. Since she was watching a TV show she wanted to finish, we ended up not leaving until nearly 6:30pm. I needed to get gas before hitting the highway, so I pulled into the gas station near me that was crowded with many other cars with something to do on a Friday night. It felt like a struck gold when there was an open pump, I swiped my debit card, hit the button for regular gas, and then nothing, no gas. A little befuddled, I went through the process again and got the same result, no gas was coming out. All this time other cars were pulling into the station and there were lines at all the other pumps. It was a small screenshot of what it must have looked like during the gas shortage of the 1970's. I was in no mood to play bumper cars and jockey for position at another pump, so I decided to leave this gas station and go to a less hectic one five minutes away.
Getting to this next gas station was taking forever; red lights, idiot double-parkers, slow buses, it was real torture. Finally I arrived at the next gas station and found myself a gas pump that did what is supposed to do and disperse gasoline. After filling up the tank we took to the I-95 north up towards Connecticut and found the roads quite open and free from other vehicles. It was one of the first times in a long time I didn't encounter traffic when going north on the 95. Things were going good until the halfway point when I realized the Google directions I printed out was for the Veteran's Memorial State Park in Bridgeport, not Norwalk. Apparently, there's about a million "Veteran's Memorial State Parks" all across the United States. Luckily she had her Blackberry phone equipped with GPS map to help guide us towards the right way, but I blew the first direction from the phone and missed the exit we were supposed to get off. Getting off at the next exit, going south on the 95, getting off again, and then heading north to reach this correct exit added a nice twelve minutes to our ride and it was seeming as if we would never get to the festival as the slowly turned to darkness. I got off the correct exit eventually and was doing quite well on taking the right streets to get us where the festival was. It was only on that final turn we had to make that a police car was stationed there and directed motorists to turn the other way - yet another diversion from letting us go where we needed to go. I ended up going the way the cops directed us and took some back residential streets to find myself at another street blocked off by police. The difference this time was the festival was in view from the marina we were at and the cop informed us this was as close as we could get with our car and that we could park anywhere near by. The found a tiny street blacked out from a lack of street lights and make the ten-minute walk to the park.
Once we presented our tickets at the gate we were stamped on the hand with the letters "OY", I'm guessing short for oysters. Upon reading about the oyster festival I thought it was going to be some type of large venue of different restaurants and eateries selling oysters in which enthusiasts such as ourselves could compare and contrast. When we got there is was more of a amusement park with carnival rides and games. Technically there were oysters and other types of seafood present, but it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Even though we were there finally, a new challenge emerged when a slight rain started to trickle from the sky. We found a tent area where all sorts of shopkeepers were selling their items and figured without an umbrella, it would be the smartest place to find cover from the rain. There was one lady's tent that specialized in chocolate, and what they did was shape it into things one would find by the beach, such as star fish and oysters. All chocolate packages were five dollars and we went with the white chocolate star fish. Once the rain let up a bit, we ventured over to the food area in search of our quest for oysters. Although we were happy to find where they were selling the oysters and clams, we were delighted to see stands for other great-smelling food such as BBQ, fried pizza, and even lobster. It was a little bizarre the way some of the stands were organized financially. Some of them you paid cash right at the stand, other you had to buy tickets for, and then present the ticket at the stand to get the food. For the raw bar, each ticket was seven dollars, and you could either get six clams or five oysters with it. We bought two tickets for fourteen and had both oysters and clams. The clams were little necks though, not the big juicy cherry stones we prefer. The oysters were the winner between the two and were at just the right size and flavor.
The next stop in the food court was a stand for Jack's Down Home Barbecue. They had their grill right next to the register and the smell from the ribs cooking were making the people on line wishing it would move faster so they can have their turn to order. Also presented was the various awards and metals Jack's had won over the years from different BBQ contests. We took a half-rack, consisting of six ribs, and squirted some extra BBQ sauce on the side in case we needed it. The last visit before finally eating was to get our lobster. A bargain at only fifteen dollars, we also took a corn on the cob and a lemonade to wash it down with for a grand total of nineteen dollars. There's not many lobster meals out there these days for under twenty bucks. I don't know how they did it, but the lobster was cooked in such a way that the shell peeled right off without having to use a nutcracker. A big tent with tables (and no chairs) were available for people to eat at, plus some haystacks positioned at the side of the tent were there and some people were using those to sit down and eat their meal. I've only seen haystacks in the movies and don't recall ever having one in front of me person. I don't know what it feels like or even how heavy could it be. Those thoughts were shuffled aside and I had more important things to tend to such as ribs and lobster. The ribs were cooked to perfection and the softened meat came off the bone so easily. I could understand how there were able to win all those BBQ awards over the years.
When we were done we strolled over to some of the other tents we missed on our way over to the food court area. One of them had German flags flapping in the clear air as the rainfall had completely stopped by them. The stand was for Heitmann's Nuts and they sold just about every candy imaginable such as taffy, gummy bears, chocolate, nuts, and more. My belly was quite full and I didn't feel like adding any candy to the mix, so to satisfy my sweet tooth I bought a pair of blueberry lollypops for three dollars. A stand not too far away from that one had cannolis which was very tough to resist, but I did. There was a tent for about any subject matter; from pickles, which I found gross, to dog food and free bibles. Done with the tents we walked to the section that had all the carnival rides, and by this time as the night grew on, more packs of teenagers with their melodramatic lives began filling the park. Our bellies were still way too full to even contemplate going on any rides and those traveling amusement park rides tend to throw people fifty yards up towards the moon once in a while. Two separate bands played far apart from each other. One band set up under a tent and rocked out in front of a capacity crowd of fifteen people. The other band had the big stage and played in front of a more decently-sized crowd, forty, with two hundred seats around them empty. As we were walking in circles two times looking for the exit, we came upon a few of the haystacks again and I couldn't resist getting up close and personal with them before leaving the park. I sat on one for a few seconds and was thoroughly impressed with it as an option for a seat. Had I known, it would've made the lobster and ribs taste that much better. I'm not sure when I'll ever get a chance to meet up with a haystack again, but next time I'm certainly not hesitating making their acquaintance.
When obstacles get in your way, a haystack will be your prize at the end of the struggle.....
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