After walking past all the vendors with food, clothing & other festival offerings, you come to a wooden ramp that takes you up on a boardwalk that gives an excellent view from above the dunes.
While walking the boardwalk to where we set up a basecamp, there was a giant tiger swallowtail butterfly flitting about the dunes.
Sitting up on the dunes behind the beach gave us a commanding view.
The only down side was the 5 minute walk to the porta-potties. But when you got there, you had no lines to wait in.
Hats off to the City of Long Beach for all the support services they provide for this event. They keep the beach and dunes clean... they put up speakers all over the area (and you can actually understand the announcer)... a crew keeps the trash cans emptied... and there's fire/rescue on hand each day.
Today was all about the 'Handcrafted Comprehensive Competition'... in other words, who builds the best of each type of kite, inflatible or ground display piece. When it came time for the delta kite class, Rhonda entered a small but elegant kite with a beautiful shimmering organza tail. Surprise, surprise, Rhonda took first place.
Towards the end of the comprehensive judging, one of the Rev teams was practicing on the next field. I managed to catch a couple of their maneuvers. on camera.
After the comprehensive judging was over Mike and I took a walk over to the 'big kite' field. On the way we ran into Catherine Gabriel and Jim Day. They were putting a few of their kites in the air.
When I entered the 'big kite' field thefirst thing I noticed were these two young kitefliers helping their dad launch a big sled kite.
Then there were all the creatures...
This display was worth a video...
In this video you'll see several thousands of dollars worth of Robert Brasington kites being flown in trains, and check out the asteroid kites by Basser Poulter.
