We are back but only for a few days. We need to be back in Winnemucca, NV this Friday for shows on Saturday and Sunday. Then back on the road for three weeks with a local fair in the middle somewhere.
This is the first time that after a long tour I am still ready to be on the road. Sure the long drive back was killer but I enjoyed and experienced so much this trip it feels strange to be home. I also learned that while away my wife learned to juggle...and she's pretty good.
Anyone got a class 3 RV (low miles) for sale? Next year I'm taking the whole family!
Jim and Nick are still in MA. After being told by one dealer they couldn’t get to it until Wed. We decided to have it towed to another dealer who promised to get to it today. Thing is the towing company who promised to get it there in an hour took 4 hours. So the new dealer couldn’t get to it until 3:30pm (they close at 5pm). We have yet another promise to have it taken care of tomorrow. If it is the “PCM” then a local mechanic said it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours and about $200 bucks…but add the towing, the first mechanic, the fact we are talking about MA and I am sure we are talking about big $$$$! If all goes well and they are out tomorrow then it is a drive to NV for them and we will meet them on Friday. MA is quickly becoming my not so favorite state.
I must confess the best New England state is Maine hands down. The space, the people, the food, the prices all out do the rest of New England…not a snob in the bunch either.
This summer was awesome. We met two families that have influenced me in different ways. One family, unfortunately, required us to cross time and space…the Foys. Long dead, this vaudeville family act consisted of a dad and his seven kids performing in the early part of the 1900s. We visited their graves and their family home, which is now a park. More to come…
We also met the Great Wallenda’s. They are a family who perform the high wire, juggling, the cloud swing and more; a family with 8 generations of circus saw dust in their veins. Not only do we as families share a love for circus and performing we are also both families dedicated to the Lord. More on them later.
To recap our tour started after a big performance on the field at a Baseball game in Cali back on June 27. the next day we did the 3 day drive to Willard Ohio for a single day. We added it into the mix after we booked the July 3,4 shows in O’Fallon, MO (a suburb of St Louis). It was going to be a four day gig but the contact wanted to play us against another act in wrangling a “better” deal. But homey don’t play that way. We do not negotiate unless it is something very unique and special (see Maine). In Ohio we pulled very big crowds and the email and Facebook comments from the audience we tremendous. It was especially nice because my cousin’s wife (therefore by cousin in law) and he kids and father came out to see our show. It was their first time.
Ohio only has a couple of interstates. That means the rest of the “highways” are just country roads. And the highways we needed to get out of Willard to Missouri were slow and tedious at times. We followed an oversized load truck for an hour, for example. Still we were impressed with how well people kept their property looking neat.
Once on the big roads we made it to O’Fallon, MO and to our hotel. We though O’Fallon would be a small town and so from the highway exit to the hotel would be a simple quick trip. Turns out it’s pretty darn big and it took 15 minutes down the main drag (lined with every possible chain store, mall, fast food joint, strip mall, etc ever created). But it was a great hotel, Holiday Inn Express. The weather promised to be dismal but it really wasn’t super bad until 5 minutes before our last show ended…then it poured and our equipment and us were drenched by night’s end. In fact, the fireworks were called off. We loaded in the rain and headed out of town the next day with the prayer that it would stay cool so our stuff wouldn’t mold in the trailer. One problem getting out is we were on a baseball field and the grass and surrounding non-paved areas were saturated. We watched one box-van truck get stuck pretty bad in the mud. The folks at the festival brought ply wood out and we made a makeshift road to the paved area and balaboom we were on our way.
After a great night it was off to St Louis the next day where we grabbed a great pulled pork Sandwich at Pappy’s. Cynthia wants to go back to St Louis just for the sandwich it was so good. Parking our giant van-trailer made visiting the Arch difficult so we just drove by and continued to London, KY.
The hotel this year in London was not as good as last year (perhaps a sign of the economy) and Amelia would end up with fleabites all over her body. So we changed rooms and bought bug spray from the nearby Wal-mart and sprayed the place before habitating it.
On the Way to London, KY we stopped by a town called Somerset and looked at a house there we had seen on the internet with great interest in making it our future home. It wasn’t handicap accessible but could be made to be. We loved it and still hope it may be our home if God so deems.
The Fair in London was, as always, awesome. We really feel at home with the folks there. We would really like to move out that way as well. No threat of rain at the laurel County Fair. We were in the only building on the grounds and it turned out to be a really bad idea. The metal building held the heat in, amplified the sound of the noisiest ride at the fair (just outside the building) and it echoed. Still we pulled the crowds in and had great shows. Jim developed his balancing act further by adding a wheel barrel to the chin there. We visited the original Sanders Café (KFC) and we spent time around the beautiful central Kentucky greenery. We also enjoyed our meal at Weavers Hot Dogs. They have a wall of fame..to be on it you had to be someone big from the area or dead. The dogs wee great and the owners remembered us from last year. We met another minor circus family..a clown circus named Nojo Circus. It was a mom, dad and teen-aged son who perform a fun family show. I didn’t catch much of their show due to our times so I can’t report on them beyond what others said about it. I should also mention that James befriended their boy and gave him some juggling tips. It was cool to see them early in the day working on routines and practicing together as the little ones did their homework and the older kids played cards (Nick, Cynthia and Miles.) Their card game would get really energetic and loud quite often. Upto this point Buttercup the snake, who is new to traveling, hadn’t eaten and we were getting worried. But the second day at the fair and he chowed down on a couple of really big mice…one so big (pregnant) he needed to work on it for about 30 minutes to push it down. (see the blog for that day for pictures). We finished the fair in London on a Saturday and the next morning we took the trek to Bowling Green. Still in Kentucky and only 2 hours away it was in the central time zone while London was on Eastern time.
We had a ½ day off so we visited the Corvette Museum. It was interesting. They even let Jim balance a few things on his chin. From that point forward even little Olivia could spot a Corvette while traveling. So we played “hug Bug” (not slug bug) and we spotted corvettes.
We started the next leg of our trip at Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, KY. We love that place. The owners truly love the park and proved their love by keeping the park open on one particularly rainy day when only 150 people showed up. For those 150 people he kept a staff on and kept the rides and shows going. After the park closes every night the owner, Dallas, would take the leftovers from the food vendors and feed them to the catfish, ducks and turtles that lived at the park’s little lake. The park would be quiet and lonely and you could see him out there doing his daily ritual and enjoying every minute of it. Charlotte, Rachel, Reed, and Grant as well as the other members of the family and the staff have become like family to us in many ways. They even through a birthday party for Miles and got Victor some birthday gifts. They are the salt of the earth. And the audiences were great. We also befriended performers from the other acts who were wonderful.Coming up…..rush to NY…rain in NY…Quassy in CT…the Wolcott Fair and our first trip to Maine and the Days off that were rewarding and scary. AND many many pictures
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