Glow Holiday Festival at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for November 29, 2020
It took a lot of stressful conversations, decision making, and a pile of negative Covid tests for this picture to be possible. In the end, though, we were so happy Luke and Avery were able to come home from college and spend Thanksgiving with us.
Normally we spend the holidays with friends and relatives, but this year the only way we were able to see others was via Zoom Video Calls. We had a bunch of them including this one with my sister, Tammy, and her family.
We also had a ZoomsGiving with my sister, Tracy, and her family.
We even hooked up with Uncle Cliff and joined him while he smoked a turkey. He had to have an awful big pipe to fit that turkey in there!
Since we were short on things to do with our boys while they were home for the holidays, we thought we'd check out the Glow Holiday Festival at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
It was touted as a drive-thru holiday light experience featuring a one-mile drive with a dozen seasonal scenes and more than 1 million holiday lights, illuminated trees, icicle and art installations, a festive gingerbread house, and other attractions. We were excited to check it out.
I was impressed with the number of cars lined up to enter. I guess we weren't the only ones sick of being stuck in the house.
In Minnesota, pretty much every festival has at least one night with a Prince theme. We happened to be there for this one which was a little bit cool. Basically we heard a couple Prince songs played at various spots along the drive and saw a couple video screens with his concert footage which was hard to see. And this Symbol which never did make much sense to me even when he changed his name to it.
I still can't decide if seeing Santa with a face-shield was a festive thing or a depressing thing. He was a nice man, though, so I'll go with festive.
In some ways, I liked how they brought in elements of the fair in a fun way. The facemask on the pronto pups guy was pretty clever.
Some items seemed a little forced. I'm not sure what a cowboy lassoing something has to do with Christmas, but let's get it in there.
The gingerbread house looked interesting at first until I looked closer and saw the scary looking barbed wire fence protecting it. I guess the person baking the gingerbread does NOT want to be disturbed.
I'm not sure if there were a million lights or not, but some of the displays were nice and others didn't look any better than what you'd see driving through someone's neighborhood.
I'm pretty sure this was the first year doing this, so I'll give them an A for effort since I'm sure it takes a lot of work to create this many displays. It will be fun to see how it evolves if it becomes an annual tradition. I could see how this could turn into a really fun event if we could actually get out of our car and be around people. We can dream of being able to do that for Thanksgiving 2021!
The boys stayed home for a few nights and have now returned back to college. It's only a couple more weeks before we'll look forward to them coming home again for Christmas.
In the meantime, we'll keep taking boring nature photos on our daily walks. It's a good way to pass the time. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
This Week's Tik Tok Videos
@toddswank A muskrat on thin ice. ##muskrat ##priorlake ##animals ##thinice ##cute
♬ Ice Dance (From "Edward Scissorhands") - Ashton Gleckman
@toddswank Glow at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. ##Minnesota ##Glow ##christmas ##lights
♬ Winter Wonderland - Dean Martin
@toddswank Christmas light show on a building at Glow. ##Glow ##minnesota ##christmas ##lightshow
♬ original sound - Todd Swank
@toddswank Prince Night at Glow at Minnesota State Fairgrounds. ##glow ##minnesota ##prince ##purplerainchallenge
♬ original sound - Todd Swank
@toddswank Glow Christmas Light Show. ##minnesota ##glow ##christmas
♬ All I Want for Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
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