Photo Essay – Austin Kite Festival at Zilker Park

The 84th Annual Zilker Park Kite Festival was held on Sunday, March 4th in Austin, Texas. You couldn’t have asked for a better day with all the sun and wind anyone could ask for. Under an umbrella of thousands of kites, the festival offered the usual American-festival goodies like games and face-painting for the little ones, rockwalls for the older ones, and food trucks and funnel cakes for the adults. They also had contests that included strongest pulling kite, most unusual kite and largest kite. Here are some of my favorite images from the event.

The Youngest Contestant

This two-year-old won the award for "youngest contestant" and, much to my delight, also seemed to have a fondness for the camera.

Old kite enthusiast

The winner of the "oldest event contestant" award, this 84-year-old kite lover was the operator of the Mary Poppins kite below.

Two kites

These two kites were both entrants in the most unusual category. I loved the way the yellow one's "fins" moved just like a ray swimming under water.

Overview of the festival

This area covered about 1/6th of the overall park and gives you some idea as to the amount of people attending the festival.

Pirate Kite

One of the more interesting kite shapes I saw amongst the thousands at the festival.

Angry Birds Kite

Every kite starts low and rises, and this angry bird is no exception.

Kids love kites

Question: How many kids does it take to control a kite?

Four kids control a kite

Answer: It takes four kids to run a kite.

The anchor of the four children above contemplates the spool.

The anchor of the four children above contemplates the spool.

Judging the "strongest pull".

Judging the "strongest pulling kite" contest required special equipment and the kites that were entered for this contest were massive.

Massive Kite contestant for Largest Kite

This contestant for Largest Kite barely made it into the air for the one minute that was required of it to compete.

Go fly a kite

Most of the entrants for the contests seemed pretty hardcore about their kites, and that definitely includes this gentleman.

Colorful, Unusual kite

All of the kites entering competition had to be hand made and this was the winner of the most unusual category.

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