I may have romanticized this festival in my head. I imagined buying a strawberry balloon from a…read morestrawberry mascot... grabbing a strawberry infused lunch from a trendy and innovative food truck... eating a homemade (organic and fresh) strawberry shortcake dessert... Ok, I definitely romanticized it. We walked down a street with standard fair-food options (corn dogs, funnel cake, towering fried foods) before deciding to skip out on lunch. I caved and got the kids a snow cone. I didn't want to pump them full of Red 40, but I was committed to the theme and ordered strawberry syrup. They loved it. I passed several shortcake options but the cake portion was the yellow store-bought circle kind and the strawberries were more of a goop. I found a homemade strawberry shortcake from an adorable little downtown store and it was okay. Not bad, not impressive. It was $7 and I ate about $4.25 of it. The area set aside for families and younger kids was a hit with my 2 and 4 year olds. The green tractor racers was a huge hit and the turns were impressively long. It's a busy festival with lots of people but they have set up many side areas/venues so the crowds are dispersed (to take full advantage of his festival download a map and plan out the music or acts you want to see) Beside my disappointment in the level of strawberriness, it was a solid family outing and the weather was perfect. If you don't have other epic plans, I can't think of a good reason NOT to go.

Signed up for the Strawberry Stampede 10k to kick off our first time visiting the Annual Strawberry…read morefestival. Other than the race, I can't believe how big of a dissapointment it was. The festival was more of a small-scale alternative to the mid-state fair including the same fair vendors, fair food, cheap craft booths with clothing and jewelry from national brands and a few from Fresno. The festival closed down about 4 blocks of streets for vendors, entertainment, and a couple for rides and bounce houses/games. There were a few booths from the same company that offered strawberry lemonade, strawberries with whip cream, and strawberries with angelfood cake. There was another booth that had cheesecake on a stick with strawberries. It seriously the strawberries to non-local gimmicky booths was about 25:1. At least there were a few local vendors offering BBQ sandwiches, but event burrito and Greek vendors were from out of town. Here's how you can make it better: get local restaurants to commit to participating and making an amazing strawberry dish! Ex: strawberry glazed meats, strawberry vinegarette, strawberry pie, strawberry sangria, sooo many options! If you could have closer to a 5:1 ratio of random vendors tobstrawberry vendors and get more local input this event could be amazing. Alternative option: don't call it the strawberry festival.. call it the AG Annual Fair Looked like a lot of the kids had a decent time, but talking with other adults in the area who voiced a similar dissapoitment from years past with no plan to return.