I loved the part about the festivals -- my town has one for Thomas the Train. I was volunteered to work a barbecue booth there one year, and soon realized that there were more adults there than kids. There's also a Potato Festival, even though potatoes haven't been grown here commercially in decades, a Rods and Rails festival (this town has the largest working railway museum west of the Mississippi, or so I'm told), and something called Fred T. Perris Day, honoring the man for whom the town is named (he helped bring the railroad here in the 1880s, though he never actually lived here; prior to that, the town was called Pinacate, which is Spanish for stinkbug, so I guess Perris is an improvement).
