Last Saturday, I hoped to experience something new and fun with my family. Scottish Highland Games… I’d never been, my wife had never been, and my twin boys didn’t even know what they were. So, we were off to a brave…old…world.
I guess the problems started with the mud. There was quite a bit. In some areas, you could “slosh” as you stepped through the mud. So, when we signed out boys up for Scottish wrestling that turned out to be shoeless and shirtless…they were not happy and let us and anyone in a 100-foot-radius know of their unhappiness. Granted, the area where they were wrestling was not muddy…just damp grass. Tears were shed, and the day took a turn. My wife then went into shut down mode where she’d rather shop through the vendor booths rather than deal with the crying.
Aside from that, I’m not sure what the appeal to the games are. They’re usually expensive to get into, and there’s not a lot to do once there. There’s shopping for Scottish things, you can wonder the “clan tents” where basically you just scan through to see if your last name fits into any of the Scottish clans, and you watch people compete in a few games. The games include a weight throw, like see how far you can throw a kettle bell, a large rock carry competition, arrow shooting and battle axe throwing. You also got to watch highland dancing and bagpiping. At $20 per person…this doesn’t seem like much when you’re there. Lines for food were horrendous. From what I could tell, kids could only join in the aforementioned wrestling and axe throwing. Though, they did have a bouncy house area…which was an additional $12 per kid. Call me cheap, but you can go to a Monkey Joe’s type bouncy place for less than that, so I said no. More tears. Day took further turn.