Adventure at Kempenfest

Kempenfest is a very large, three-day craft show and fair held each year in Barrie, Ontario right on the shore of Lake Simcoe, and it seems that every year there is some form of bad weather.  Last year it rained so hard there was flooding, and this year, my first time to do the show, there was a severe thunderstorm with high winds and hail and even the threat of tornadoes.  With over 300 vendors, there were a lot of tents that needed to survive the night.  Not all of them did.

I didn't sleep well in my hotel on Sunday night because of the thunder and lightning, and a bit because I was worried about how my tent would fare in the high winds.  I raced to the venue early Monday morning (a civic holiday) and was delighted to find my tent in perfect condition.  Many others were not so fortunate.  There were the remains of tents scattered all through the venue, and at least a couple of vendors who had left their inventory in their tents overnight, arrived to find that they had lost everything.  Some vendors just abandoned their tent frames and the piles of "bones" made me think of the elephant graveyard from the Tarzan series.

I am glad that I made the large investment in a heavy-duty, waterproof rather than water-resistant, tent.  My husband and I also did a very good job of securing the structure with stakes on each leg, stakes and guy wires holding down the top at each corner, and 40 pounds of cement weights on each leg. Setting all of that up was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

A collapsed tent next to mine

A "graveyard" on the other side of my tent

More remains

The setting by the lake.  These tents almost landed in it.

Adventure at Balls Falls

I just completed the four-day Balls Falls Thanksgiving Festival (Canadian Thanksgiving) and it ended up with an unusual adventure.  After three beautifully sunny but cold days, it rained on Monday and turned the grounds into a muddy mess.  Around 3:30pm, a very large van tried to exit the area and managed to slip and slide right into my tent!!!!!  The guy had tried a couple of times to get through the somewhat narrow opening between my tent and the cars parked along the side, and each time his bald tires let him slip closer to me.  Finally he hit one of my tent poles.  I screamed at him to stop, and fortunately he did.  There was no way he could go backwards or forwards without sliding further into my tent which was staked firmly into the ground.  The only solution was to take my tent down and hope that the pole wasn't damaged.  With some help from the show personnel, I packed up all my inventory, broke down the displays and emptied the tent.  We removed all the stakes and weights and when the tent was free of restraints, we picked it up and moved it about a foot and a half away from the van.  This was my first time to use the tent, and I had worried about all kinds of things except getting hit by a van!  It turned out that the tent pole and zipper were fine, so now I just have a couple of muddy side walls to clean up.

My new tent

Some of the best shows in my area are outdoors, so I have made the investment in a tent.  Not just any pop-up for me.  No, I splurged on a LightDome tent that is actually waterproof instead of merely water resistant.  My one experience with a typical pop-up tent supplied by a show organizer was disastrous - it started leaking profusely as soon as it started raining.  My husband and I put the tent together for the first time yesterday and I'm happy to say there was a minimum of yelling and swearing.  The tent is quite tall so hubby's 6'6" height was a major advantage.