Mark your calendars. The 32nd Annual Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival is just around the corner.

The Center for Wooden Boats holds a Fourth of July festival on Lake Union each year that attracts some 10,000 participants. The theme is heritage wooden boats. The ambiance is that of an old-fashioned, down-home waterfront festival where everything is fun, almost everything is free and nothing much is fancy. It's as authentically grassroots American as you can get and has been for the last 31 years.

If it's at the festival, you can probably touch it, try it or do it. Experience maritime culture first hand. It's a hands-on festival right in the center of the city, in the summer, on a bustling lake.

Families come down in droves because everything can be done by young and old together - toy boat building, sailing model boats on the pond, boat rides and races, picnicking, clambering over boats big and small, festive food and music, and general joy.

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