More Eno Festival Fun
The “Unity Parade” is one the highlights of the Eno Festival.
The 26th Festival for the Eno is one of the biggest community events here in Durham. The festival lasted for three days, Saturday thru Monday and it was, as always, great family fun. This year, the 4th of July weekend (US Independence Day) was a bit less sweltering hot than the last couple of years, and the turnout seems to have been very good.
The festival is a real treat of local color, lots of North Carolina homegrown artistic talent, on and off stage, lots of grassroots activism and entrepreneurship. The purpose of the festival is to raise funds for the Eno River Association, which buys up land along the banks of the Eno for preservation, creating a buffer that protects this pretty river against encroaching development.
Saturday, I volunteered at the info booth of Piedmont Biofuels and was very busy most of the day. Yesterday, Laura and I took the kids to the festival to enjoy it as a family. We just hung out all day, jammed to the music, splashed in the river, perused the crafts booths. We had a grand old time. I think that over the last 10 years we have missed the Eno Festival only once or twice.
Our connection to the Eno goes way back to the time when Laura and I moved here, got married and lived in a small apartment across the road from West Point on the Eno. Today we refer to that time as our “life behind the Kroger.” It was a stressful time, and we often took long walks in the Eno Park to relax.
The Eno Park became so dear to us that we decided to celebrate our wedding there, a year later. We invited both our families, got a caterer to prepare a feast, had musicians play some danceable tunes, and had a great time. Over the years, we brought our kids to the park and we even worked at the park, Laura as a tour guide at the McCown Mangum house and I as a miller at the West Point Mill.
Anyway … here are some more pics from last weekend:
Children love to play in the cool river.
The parade was fun.
