Great Plains Renaissance Festival

The Third Annual Spring Great Plains Renaissance Festival was held April 22nd-23rd at Sedgwick County Park in Wichita, KS, this past weekend. We'd gone to the one last fall and enjoyed ourselves, so we thought we'd go again. It's an impressive gathering and less expensive to attend than Kansas' other similar festival in Bonner Springs, though it could benefit from a move to a more wooded and shady area like the Bonner Springs "renfest."

At last fall's festival, Ace Jackalope met Chuck Sawyer, who subsequently made him a suit of chain maille.


Sawyer's chain maille isn't just for men and jackalopes.


We didn't see any women modeling this stuff.


Wichita-based group, Heavy Metal Combat, uses plate armor in their shows.


Ace seemed oddly interested in battle tips from Frank Keith before combat.


Members of the group make their own armor.




Women...ya gotta have a few handy at battles.








Yep, thats a baseball bat.


Other styles of plate armor were available from vendors.


Pirates seem to be a growing theme in performance and costuming.


We saw a few people we'd taken pictures of last fall. This is "the Tree Lady."


Latifah Israel enjoys participating in costume.


Rhonda Holm (left) and Christine Ulrich, both of Hutchinson, give Ace a perch from which to observe people in costume.












One of Ace's readers, a girl known as "Boo", enjoys a camel ride.


When Boo sees Ace online, she thinks he's a reindeer.


After leaving the fair, we hit Target and discovered that Easter stuff had dropped to 90% off. Ace bought a cart full of chocolate bunnies and Peeps and kept talking to them: "soon, my brothers, soon" he whispered before becoming strangely silent.


Coming tomorrow: The Lope's one-year anniversary post.