Beef sprouts and bristly cows: (Saturday's Adventures, 3)

I'm finally getting around to posting Last Saturday's adventures, a process which is taking long enough that it's delaying this Saturday's adventures...


Last Saturday's Adventure was: Cows On the Concourse, a blend of cows and Farmer's market. Even though the Babies! and I had previously been to the Farmer's Market, I thought the addition of cows there was reason enough to go again.

We began by walking east on Capitol Square, with Mr F leading the way through the crowds of people who would stop suddenly to examine beansprouts or beef jerky -- both are available at the Farmer's Market. There's so much stuff there, you could probably get bean jerky and beef sprouts.

Here's intrepid Mr F:


At the first corner, we stopped to watch Banjo Guy. I was hoping he'd do a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown:


But right next to him were some balloon-twisting guys -- one of three sets of buskers who make money twisting balloons for tips that were there that day -- and Mr Bunches liked them, so we watched them for a while. They twisted Mr Bunches up a dog on a leash, which he then dropped when Mr F tried to go wandering away and we had to chase him. I went after Mr F while carrying Mr Bunches, with Banjo Guy grabbing the dog for us until we got back. (When we got back, Balloon Guy ad libbed "If there's anything else we can do for you, let us know."

Mr Bunches didn't want to carry his balloon, but I had to hold hands, and had a backpack, so we twisted the leash into a hat:

I did that on my own -- and I'm not even a trained professional. I bet I could've made a few bucks that day.

We then moved on up the street to where the fountains on Capitol Square were, miraculously, working. I'm not overdoing it with the word miraculously: Mr F loved them, for one thing -- he would have played there all day (and spent some time trying to climb on top of it, and getting mad at me because I wouldn't help him):


Plus, the fountains, which haven't been working this year, were right next to a Church, so I figured maybe there was some divine intervention that had given Mr F a reason to be damp for the rest of the trip:
While the Babies! played in the water, I listened to the sounds of the Irish-y band that was playing across the street -- music that, as always, had the effect of making me thing that terrible things were going to be happening soon.


We moved on up the road before the Titanic could break in half (or something like that) and came to the best street musicians of the day:



Those girls could really play violin. But all I had on me was a $20, so I didn't tip them right away. I told the Babies! we'd get change and come back to give them some money. [SPOILER ALERT! We didn't.]

The next street musician -- we still hadn't found the cows -- was a bagpiper. I love bagpipes. Mr Bunches hated it, though, and practically ran past:


Finally, we reached the cow portion, where there was a lady giving a speech about making butter, a tractor we could look at, grilled cheese sandwiches for sale, a mooing contest, a bunch of people doing sit-ups (yeah, I didn't get that part, either), and, of course, Cows:


We had to wait in line to get up to that cow, standing behind an old guy who was there talking for what seemed like years. Once we did get close enough to pet it, both Mr F and Mr Bunches decided that the cow was kind of frightening and didn't want to touch it. (I petted it's nose. It was bristly.)

From there, it was over to the Capitol Lawn for a snack and some relaxin':



While we watched the throngs of people buying beef snaps to the sounds of violins and bagpipes:


Mr Bunches made some friends:


But he had to leave them when we decided to go up to the Capitol Observation deck. Up four flights of stairs, around the Capitol, and then up another flight of stairs -- a tiny twisty metal spiral staircase-- and we finally got to see Madison from atop. Here's Mr Bunches looking out at East Washington Ave:

What you can't see there is that I'm holding Mr F on my lap, with one arm tightly around him, while my leg is across Mr Bunches' leg to hold him down-- because the moment we got to the top, they both tried to run directly towards the fence and I nearly had a heart attack as I pictured them climbing up it to get a better look.