The Great American Picnic

Our second round of guests is coming to an end as Mike and his girlfriend, AJ, left today and Ross heads back to Chicago tomorrow. It was a crazy four days of fun and many laughs. Yesterday we spent the day at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. This is the other big event here that we religiously attend. It kind of reminds me of the Taste of Madison, but ten times better. It’s also called the Great American Picnic as there are plenty of food vendors up where you can walk around and taste all different kinds of restaurants in the area. There is also a beer garden, wine area and then a vodka tent. Yup, a vodka tent sponsored by Absolut. In Wisconsin there are plenty of beer tents at every festival, but I have never seen a liquor tent until we started attending this event four years ago. I never cared for beer tents, but once I learned about the vodka tent I was super excited because my favorite drink is vodka tonics. We usually get there around 1pm so we can get plenty of food in our bellies before we head to the Vodka tent. Last night we arrived in the vodka tent around 5pm and we were the last ones standing in the tent at 10pm when it was closed down. Of course we were all proud of that one. We also met up with our good friends the Campbell’s and it wouldn’t be a Culinary Fest without them. We were missing our other friends the Rietz’s, but they apparently had a good excuse for not attending. They recently had their baby less than a month ago and I guess Kim didn’t want to pump in a port-o-pottie. HE HE! We are responsible adults as we did take a cab all the way home. After five hours in a vodka tent a cab was our only option anyway. It was a great time and now the countdown begins for next year’s Culinary Fest and I am sure Ross and Mike will be back next year.