This is something I look forward to every year! It’s the Colonial Heritage Festival, or Colonial Days, in Orem Utah. I missed this so much when we lived in AZ. My Independence Day experience just doesn’t feel complete unless I go to this event on the day or two before the holiday. It’s like a little bit of Colonial Williamsburg gets transported to suburban Utah for a few days every July. It features people dressed up in colonial costumes, showing what life was like back then with printing, cooking, spinning wool, and more. If you go you get to see people dressed up like Minutemen drilling to defend the townspeople. If you live anywhere close, I hope you go! It’s free! My friend Gove Allen is part of it. Hopefully he will be there this year. He used to dress up as a baker and demonstrate bread baking, but in the past handful of years or so he has dressed up as colonial printer Isaiah Thomas and told stories of the Sons of Liberty and the Revolutionary War. His stories are so inspiring. So if you go, be sure to go to the printing press area and listen to Gove/Isaiah! You won’t regret it, he’s amazing!

Want more Celebrate America 250 ideas? Go here.