Getting ready for the Watermelon Eating contest.A Perfect Day to Celebrate Watermelon
During the summer there's not a lot of large celebrations, mostly because just about everyone is concentrating on making sure our visitors are treated like guests and they that they're having a great time.
But there are a few, let's call them, mini-festivals and one of our absolute favorites is the Kitty Hawk Kites Watermelon Festival at the company's Jockey's Ridge Crossing store in Nags Head. They list it as the 11th Annual Watermelon Festival, but those of us who have lived here longer remember the Festivals going back longer than that.
What it really is, is a celebration of kids, family and summer. Because let's face it—fresh watermelon is about as perfectly summer as it gets.
So what is?
It's all about kids. Yes, Mom and Dad will have a great time, but the activities are really geared to children. There's face painting, tie dye shirt making and toy demos—the balance board was really cool.
There were great activities. Stanley the Shark—think a mechanical bull only a shark—was getting a real workout inside Kitty Hawk Surf Company. The inflatable waterslide is always popular and kids were lined up all day.
One that was really cool...or maybe cold. Kids, and some adults, stuck their hand in a bath of ice water then immediately dipped their hand into soft wax creating an image of their hand.
The highlight of any Watermelon Festival, though, has to be the contests. The seed spitting and the watermelon eating.
Always highly competitive, ultimately it's all about having fun. Nonetheless, the eating contestants really gave it their all, champing their way through three large pieces of watermelon in hope of taking home the grand prize...whatever that may have been.
Is the Kitty Hawk Kites Watermelon Festival a huge day of celebration? No, not really. But at the end of the day, what it really is all about is what the Outer Banks does best...family, kids and fun.
