Oregon Country Fair. One Word---HOT!

How about two words to describe it instead of one: HOT and CROWDED!

I attended the fair today. I went down yesterday. The Neuterscooter vet invited me to camp with her family and I got in for free. But the campground was someone's large mowed property, turned into a dusty hot crowded field campground for the fair. The property owner was extremely nice, and gracious, considering people would try to sneak in, both to park and camp, without paying. He says it's a big problem.

There were four porta potties but no water available. And it was scorching hot. I had only an hours' notice on the invitation, so really had no time to pack or prepare, just went. I threw in the tent I bought over a year ago. I'd never used it before. I thought a two person tent would be just my size. There were on sale for barely anything. I wanted to go camping that year, maybe it was two years ago, so I got it.

Well, it was tiny all right. I couldn't fit into it, without curling. I ended up trying to sleep in my car. I'm too long for a two person tent I discovered.

But I'm really too long to sleep comfortably in my car, too. I have to scrunch up and that hurts my back. I had no padding along, having emptied my car of its usual load of cage covers, which, in pinch times, I've used to pad the back for use as a bed. It was a painful night followed by a painful day, as luck would have it. When I mess up my back at night, then I have to work kinks out during the day.

Last night, the vet and her family had left the fair and gone to town. I had lost track of them almost immediately upon arrival there. In the end, I thought they had decided to get a motel or something, and went to bed in the back of my car finally about 9:30. They returned 15 minutes after that and I helped them put up their tent then I went back to bed in my car.

Today I roamed the fair. I ate inside the fair with the vet and her family, but then they went off to the child care pavilion and I lost track of them the rest of the day. It was so hot!

The crowds were so thick that at one point, nobody could move because there was such a body jam. Finally, a staff member started yelling at people going one direction to move, even if it was just a few inches, to the right, so that people going the other direction could get through. It lasted a good 15 minutes, body to body, in simmering heat, nobody able to move. I was trying to exit at that point, with my back hurting and I finally leaned against a post on a booth, to wait out the big jam up.

Lots of eclectic stuff as usual and people dressed up to the hilt. I think the fair is good for people, they can let go, be themselves, be silly, artistic, whatever they want to be there and people are accepting and nonjudgemental for the most part of pretty much anything. Pretty much anything is expected and the reason many people come, to see "pretty much anything".

But I don't think I'll go again. Too hot and too many people crammed up in those narrow walkways. Not very many places to sit down and collect oneself either. Or to rest.

Did I mention it was HOOOOOTTTTTT?

I had to come home. This morning, I came home to medicate the kittens and feed cats and clean litterboxes, anticipating that I would camp down there tonight and not be home again until tomorrow afternoon late. I also watered my garden.

In a "OH MY GOD" moment late in the day at the fair, I remembered I had left one faucet on, watering. I hoped a neighbor would have turned it off, but then I don't have that kind of neighborly neighbors, so I was worried.

I tried to find a phone. I couldn't. I was going to call someone in Albany to turn it off. Nobody had cell reception in that area either. So I had to come home. Sure enough, water is running down the driveway into the street.

I can't say I'm very happy with myself for that major mental slip, that will cost me big time in a water bill and it cost me the weekend, too, because I can't justify driving all the way back. I can't say I will look at my neighbors the same again either.