This weekend, WM and I headed north to Liberty Lake Day Camp in Bordentown to attend our third New Jersey Renaissance Faire.

This gorgeous and majestic creature is “Sir Angus.” And his horse.

If you live anywhere in NJ and have yet to visit the New Jersey Renaissance Faire, please go give it a try. And you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, Kim. We go to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire every year and it’s huge and amazing!” I know! It is! We go too.

But the NJ one only runs for 3 weekends a year, and it will charm the pants/kilts/pantaloons off of you. It’s smaller, but because of that it’s easier to see everything and catch more performances. It’s more immersive – there are dozens and dozens of costumed staff members along the pathways who will interact with you, if you’d like. It’s less commercial.

For those 3 weekends out of every year, Liberty Lake Camp is transformed into English village of Crossford. What makes Crossford different than your average Shire is that it’s located on some sort of time wormhole that brings different historical personalities there each year. This year Italy’s Borgias made a visit. Last year it was Brunhilde and Vikings, the year before it was Blackbeard, etc.

This gorgeous and majestic creature is Jacques Ze Whipper.

Two years ago we funded their Kickstarter to give them a permanent office and to make the Faire 3 weeks instead of 2. It was probably the best Kickstarter we supported.

We visit, we wander, we attend some performances, we usually watch a blacksmithing demo because BLACKSMITHING!, we buy something stupid, and we come home.

This majestic and gorgeous creature is my amazing husband.

But this year we saw a zip line. I have always wanted to try zip lining. So without much thought we coughed up $15 each and got to zip across Liberty Lake. Despite the woman in front of me’s tale of woe about being stuck on one in Mexico because she was too light (sigh) and someone slamming into her on the way down, I was clipped to the wire, took a tiny step of faith off of the platform and HAD A BLAST!

Video proof, shot by WM:

Ziplining at the NJ Ren Faire from Kimberly Russell on Vimeo.

I felt like I could fly! The straps were comfortable and I felt completely secure the whole way. I am so glad I took that chance. The best part was we got to zipline back across the lake so that we didn’t have to walk allllll the way back to get our stuff. Those were screams of joy, by the way.

This year’s stupid purchase was this tiny axe. I don’t know what to do with a tiny axe. It’s not even sharp.

It’s not sharp so I can’t toss it at things.

Next year, if you’re a proud New Jerseyan (or even a curious Philadelphian) go visit the New Jersey Renaissance Faire.