I think the lesson learned here is: go early. Jamie and I trailed our way down to Wareham to…read morepartake in the quintessential "fall in New England" experience that is a cranberry festival. Unfortunately, arriving at just before 3:30PM is far too late to enjoy nearly any part of what A.D. Makepeace put together for the 2016 Cranberry Harvest Celebration.
Admission was $10 a piece for adults, with the option to pay either with cash or debit/credit card. With no map or guide to show you what to do or where to go, you may end up wandering around quite awhile. Upon entrance, we happened to see a sign that said "last bus to the bog 3:30". Since we weren't quite sure what else was going on, we walked briskly to the bus location, hopped on, and took a short ride to the bogs. The scenery upon arrival was exactly what you'd picture: a flooded bog with cranberries floating aloft, fall colors highlighting the trees, people in waders running their hands through this year's harvest.
I saw several festival-goers in said waders, tromping through a sectioned off part of the bog, and got super excited. Could this be my next profile photo?? (trying to be hip, here). We disembarked the school bus and were abruptly greeted with a sign, pricing activities. The cost of a stereotypical "basic" girl's new FB photo? $25 per person. Groups of 4 or more get in for $90, which I guess is a nod towards families. Outrageous. You're provided with waders; for $25 you get to play in bog water and snap your own photos on your iPhone. We decided to skip it, which ended up being a moot point, as they stopped this activity at 3:30PM. If they decided to offer this for $10, I think that'd be a fair price. You'd have a line the entire time.
We walked around, snapping photos of the bog, before spotting a couple of food stands and treating ourselves to $3 corn dogs. Everything appeared to be packing up. I stopped by a beer stand (which had been giving out free samples), only to be told they were out of cups, and then, that they were no longer giving samples as it was after their cut off time. We did get to enjoy one fun activity: bog in a cup! Ocean Spray provides a little hands-on experience for festival goers to start their own cranberry bog (in a plastic cup), which they get to take home. It was a cute, somewhat kitschy doing, but at least we got to participate in something.
Since everything was shuttering its doors out on the bogs, we got in line to head back to the main festival, hoping there would still be things to do and see there. Nope. Once again, everything was closing down: food vendors, crafts booths, historical/educational opportunities, recreational activities. This was around 4:15PM or thereabouts. Apparently, according to their FB site, the event is done around 4PM. If we arrived at a few minutes before 3:30, don't you think someone would mention that they're wrapping things up?
I drowned my disappointment in a sticky, chewy caramel apple, and we walked down the road back to the truck. I'm sure that, had we gone at 10:00AM when the gates were opened, we would have been inundated with a surging crowd of New Englanders, all jockeying to get the best position to watch a bog's harvest, or queuing up to pick through cranberries, or any number of other fun, interesting, and educational activities that were offered here. So, the moral of the story is: go early, enjoy all the offerings, but expect crowds (apparently, "tens of thousands of people" descended upon Tihonet Pond this weekend).
