Favorite festivals which I've been to are the NC Maritime Museum's Strange Seafood Exhibition, featuring all sorts of dishes serving allegedly edible odd and strange creatures from NC waters. Umm, umm, good(?). A little later in the year is the NC Seafood Festival, a Friday-Sunday affair featuring live music, all sorts of (conventional) seafood, and fun events like the Shuck, Rattle & Roll and Flounder Fling contests. The reigning Miss North Carolina traditionally flings the first flounder, much like local dignitaries throw out the first pitch at the ball park.
Favorite festival which I've never been to is the Montana Testicle Festival, once held at a tiny campground right on I-90 near the mouth of Rock Creek, just east of Missoula. Being the nominal celebration of the serving of fried Rocky Mountain oysters, the Testy Festy evolved into a bacchanalian extravaganza of epic proportions--sort of a combination of Woodstock, Burning Man, Terlingua Chili Cook Off, and a NASCAR tailgate party. I'm normally not much for crowds, particularly raucous crowds, but I love me a spectacle, and by all descriptions, the Testy Festy was truly a spectacle. Past tense since I don't think Testy Festy survived the sudden death of its founder a few years back.
Foy
