Lantern Festival - 2021
In case you didn't know, Utah is a desert. In most cases, this isn't beneficial unless you enjoy drag racing or photography. This is basically the only exception. Utah's lantern festival! Out in the middle of nowhere on Utah's salt flats. This magical event is something directly out of Tangled and a lot of other places could never do a mass gathering of flying fire. Yay for Utah for being so bare!
So it's not exactly a "festival" since multiple companies do it basically every weekend all summer long. Regardless, it's a lot of fun and you should absolutely go a simple Google search should get you other companies offering lantern events. The company we found was "The Lights Tour"
I did notice they really only advertise via Facebook. So you'll want to follow their page to keep up on future dates. They are really big into the "early bird" pricing, so that's another reason to stay on top of dates.
The drive for us was about 40 minutes. (We live in downtown Salt Lake) It was out in Grantville at an empty dirt field. The event started at 4pm with food trucks and a live band. Although the actual lantern send-off wasn't until 9pm. We arrived around 5pm. And it was hot.... also the California fire smoke was in the air which made it feel even hotter. If I were to go again, I'd get there around 6pm or 7pm. The band is fun and all... but I don't need to sit in the hot desert for 5 hours...
They put these tiki torches spaced all throughout the field. There was plenty of places to set up our chairs. But if you go on a busier day, getting there earlier to be able to sit next to a torch might be a good idea.
A lot of people were decorating and writing messages on their lanterns. The lanterns are pretty heavy duty so you don't have to worry about breaking it. They also provided sharpies for us to write our messages. These lanterns are perfect to write messages to loved ones who passed away, write dreams and future goals, as well as write aways stresses and worries. Everyone who attended really took to heart writing these messages. Lots of people has messages all over the 3 feet lanterns.
Finally, around 9pm we did our first lantern send-off. If you can, DON'T go on a windy day. First of all, the entire event can be canceled if it's too windy. But even if it doesn't get canceled, it's very hard to get the lanterns to float on windy days.
How it works is the hot air fills the lantern making it float. But with the wind, even the slightest of a tilt can make all the hot air escape. We were eventually able to fill ours with the help of my patient husband, but it was still a feat.
If you aren't in a hurry like we weren't. They usually do a second send-off 30 minutes after the first. That gives the people in a hurry enough time to leave the parking lot and then when we left there wasn't any traffic.
I personally liked the first send-off better because there were more lanterns in the air at one time. But the second time we were a lot better at lighting the lantern successfully and it flew a lot higher.
All in all, this is an excellent family-friendly event to do on the weekend. You will get home pretty late and a little dusty. But experiencing the magical event really makes it all worth wild.
Have you ever been to a lantern fest? If so let me know how your's went in the comments!
Best,
Breezy
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