I am SO EXCITED to share this experience with you (well, as much as typed words, posted pics and videos can "share"). :)
Saturday was the annual Fall Festival on Fort Riley - known as "Apple Day" - it is a completely free and very entertaining event. It's also kind of the "last Hurrah" before the weather turns "if-y" and winter starts to move in. Our entire community has been abuzz with activity this past week - planning, organizing, coordinating and preparing for the big Day! It was so exciting to watch as things started to come together.
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| What a busy and wonderful lineup of events! |
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| Map of activities/events and displays. |
Our own Battalion was approved to participate in the Day - and we chose to sell funnel cakes & coffee to raise money for the 4 FRGs in our Battalion here at Fort Riley (the other 3 are located on Fort Bliss and Fort Leonard Wood). It was so inspiring to watch the FRG Leaders from each of these Companies work together to pull off our part of this HUGE event.
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| Debbie & I the night before the event - we had a banner-making party:) |
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| The sign in "action." |
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| Look at this line! It was like this ALL day - our booth had the longest line consistently. |
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| Behind the scenes snapshot! |
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| Still smiling after a long day of heat, grease burns and fried funnel cakes! |
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| Yes, we had 6 deep fryers going at once at all times...the inspector hovered around our booth all day. |
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| Those hungry people aren't going to feed themselves...time to mix up some more cake-y goodness! |
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| The less glamorous "cleanup" :-( |
We managed to raise a fair amount of funds for the 4 FRGs....which should go quite a long way to take care of Soldiers and Family members.
A friend & I spent
3 1/2 hours today cleaning up the mess you see above. What you don't see here is that all of these items are COVERED in grease. It.was.disgusting. We managed to make a good sized dent in the stack above, but there's probably more grease scrubbing in my future!!
Ewwww. :P
Why is it called Apple Day?
ReplyDeleteAfter a quick scan of Fort Riley traditions, I discovered that HASFR (Historical & Archeological Society of Fort Riley) has had a fall making tradition for more years than can be easily counted. Each year, in the fall, they make & sell their Apple pies to raise funds. There used to be a Fall Festival AND an Apple Day event, but the two merged in 2000 to become simply "Fall Apple Day Festival" or, as we call it now, "Apple Day" and there's no doubt that the central event/activity is still the HASFR Apple Pie: last year they sold 2000 of their pies before running out. All sources I've seen point to a record breaking year this year! :)
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