Lowcountry Oyster Festival

I've heard about this event for so many years. Since I couldn't show yesterday because my friend and co-owner of Gabby was judging, I decided to go in another direction and attend the World's Biggest Oyster Roast. Boasting of over 65,000 lbs of succulent oysters and over 10,000 oyster lovers, I decided that it was time to attend this world class event. Fortunately, I got to Boone Hall Plantation where the festival was held around 10:45 AM. Already there was a stream of cars going in to the event.

There was a lot of standing water on the grounds but I slogged through to buy my oyster tickets. I managed to get through 1.5 buckets of delicious oysters. There were tons of people having tent parties, eating food from other local restaurants that had set up booths, and generally enjoying the sunshine and nice temperatures. I took my camera and shot over 100 photos of oysters and people doing all kinds of things. Some were in the oyster shucking contest and plied their skills as the crowd yelled "Shuck, shuck, etc. " Others were really brave and entered the oyster eating contest where the idea was to see how many lbs (yes, lbs) of oysters you could slide down your gullet in 3 minutes. The winner managed to hold down 6.5 lbs of raw oysters. His table manners were on a different scale and closer to what one would imagine Neanderthal man would be like downing a mega amount of oysters.

Later in the afternoon, there were several bands who took the stage. The best was Plane Jane who seems to be booked at a lot of events in the area. They do good covers of lots of rock songs. People were dancing in the muck and drinking what seemed to be a lot of beers. I was probably the only stone cold sober person amongst this sea of humanity. I did get lots of shots of people just to remind myself that it isn't fun to make a total fool of yourself and wake up with a hangover. One of Budweiser's employees was wearing a hard hat with two horns on which were skewered a Budweiser can topped by a plastic cup. He was not the best advertisement for the "Drink responsibly" logo of Budweiser.

I left around 5: 30 and managed to get out of the parking lot after about a half an hour. There were a lot of people who were bogged down in the muck. Some cars were buried up to the axle and might not have gotten out based on the number of inebriated people trying to help. I just hope that they managed to snag a packet or two of saltines to tide them over until this morning. It was a good time and really didn't seem like there were 10,000 plus crazy people out eating oysters. I posted a bunch of photos at www.Flickr.com--search under people for BlondeonBlonde.