This weekend my roommates and I made a forty-five minute venture to Porter, Oklahoma. I think it's really great to find all the adventures you can that are close to you, and it's really nice to live with people who have a similar mindset. Going to the Porter Peach Festival was Lindsay's idea. Lindsay is really great about making foggy ideas come to a concrete reality, and Tori is always a great travel companion because she will always run with every joke you tell, even if it's a really ridiculous one. So we have fun.
Before leaving we made it a point to grab some breakfast. Somehow we always settle on honey butter chicken biscuits from What-A-Burger, probably because they are delicious... and cheap. They are also cheap. After breakfast we were off. Porter, Oklahoma is a pretty small town, so the further away we got from Owasso, the smaller the towns became.
An intense storm had blown through Oklahoma last Thursday and Coweta and Porter both had been ravaged by wind damage. There was no tornado, but they turned on the sirens as if there were one. Driving there we saw tons of downed trees, power lines, and roofs that were in dire need of repairs. Luckily, the festival was still on even though there was apparently damage to some of the vendors stalls and lingering power outages.
Porter was definitely a happing place this weekend and it was a cool thing to see. You can tell that the community really looks forward to the event every year. Everyone seemed so happy. My favorite thing that I had was some home made peach tea. I could have drank gallons of it, there was such a sweet peachy aftertaste, probably due to the small chunks of fresh peach floating in the tea. It was incredible. We were really sad because we missed out on some peach cobbler. The three of us are slowly learning that if you see something you want you shouldn't leave and come back for it later. Obviously this is not the first time that we have made this mistake.
There was also a parade that was happening right as we got there. Our favorite part of it was this clown that walked around soliciting "fresh hot kisses", which we laughed at quite a bit. Also he had a tiny wagon bearing a pot of sunflowers in tow behind his normal wagon, and I got really excited about it. I have to say the details of this guys costume were on point.
Downtown Porter is just oozing with small town charm. It kind of makes me want to go back and visit sometime when there isn't something going on just to see what happens there in the day to day. We tracked down this incredible mill complete with hand lettering and christmas lights, it was very picturesque. Also my favorite part of the town itself was the two metal water towers stating that Porter is the Peach Capitol of Oklahoma. They were visible from just about anywhere we stood in the town.
It was almost 12:30 and we had yet to purchase any peaches, so we went back to the Livesay Orchards where most of the peaches are grown. After frolicking through a few peach groves we headed over to the market area to pick out our peaches. We definitely have some plans to make some delicious baked goods and maybe even try to make some home made peach tea, but they are just as delicious al la carte. So we'll see what happens.