Father's Day Weekend Fun

Well, this past weekend wasn't nearly as hectic as the past several have been, but we were still plenty busy. Friday evening I attended the Spring Lake Heritage Festival Car Show. I pulled in the parking lot right about 5pm and found the place hopping already. I found a spot towards the back of the parking lot and parked the hot rod, Set-up the display materials and went and got registered. After a hamburger cooked by the local boy scouts to help finance their upcoming trip to West Virginia for a rafting adventure, I grabbed the camera and proceeded to start at one end of the parking lot and work my way up and down the rows of shiny metal. I managed to spend most of the evening shooting pics and BS'n with people I met along the way and was having a good time. Right about 9pm they started with the awards ceremony so I went over by the tent and picked out a piece of curb to sit on to view the festivities. They went right along thru all the classes and finally came to the class we were entered in and much to my surprise when they rattled off the 2nd place winning car they called my name! I was pleasantly and genuinely surprised. I went up got my very nice trophy, shook the man's hand and then sat back down. The big winner of the evening, Best of Show was a gentleman with a huge old Ford Truck that he'd turned into a car hauler. It was real impressive and worthy of the honor in my opinion. It wasn't long after that everyone was firing up their cars and heading out of the parking lot. I put all my stuff away and did the same thing, passing kids holding up "light 'em up" signs on the way out.

I decided to take a cruise thru town and stopped at Dairy Treat on the way thru to celebrate the trophy (like I need an excuse). From there I headed for home. When I got there Wanda wanted to go down to Clover Bar to get something to eat and check in on Chris who was still there washing dishes. We had our food and chatted with the future son-in-law a bit, who just turned 21 today. By the time we got back to the house it was 11 and time to call it a day.

Saturday we got up early and headed up to the property and a meeting with MarkE to exchange the down payment funds for a receipt. Once that was done he came out to the lot with us to double check where everything was going to go. They already had the drainfield for the sewer in so we're making progress......but it's still gonna be most of a month before everything is ready to go. The electric is gonna be the one thing slowing us down. In the meantime I plan to do a some rustic camping......an overnighter or two just to see how it feels.

After Mark took off I got busy with mowing and cutting limbs while Wanda and Chris went up to the lodge and spent awhile swimming in the pool. Later they came out to the campsite and helped me out for a bit. When we'd decided we were done with lot maintenence for the day we went back to the lodge for lunch and another swim in the pool before heading for home. For some reason I didn't ever take any pics of the drainfield, or this weekend's improvements so I'm enclosing a rough drawing of the layout. Click on the pic to get it to a size you can actually read.

I was planning to go to the races at Berlin when we got home, but once we got there I decided to hang around the house for the evening and get caught up on some of the little stuff that needed to be done. before I knew it, it was after midnight and time for bed.

Sunday morning the alarm went off at 5am. It was Father's Day morning and for the last several years that means we'll be at Charlton Park in Hastings MI. for one of the biggest car shows around these parts. By the time I got Chris up and myself ready to go it was almost 5:30am. The weather was pretty iffy looking but I'd already decided I was going no matter what the weather. The ride from home to the park was pretty much uneventful. It was a nice ride thru farm country and it did spit rain a time or two but nothing bad. We got to Charlton Park road a bit after 7, shut the motor off and claimed our place in line. The gates hadn't been opened yet so we hung out in the street, talking our temporary neighbors and taking pics. Once the line started to move we jumped in the car and crept our way into the park. I knew where I wanted to park and for the 3rd year running I was able to get a nice spot right along the river, just before the pavement comes to an end.

After setting up the display materials I headed over to register and get my official T-Shirt and dash plaque. When I got back to the car Chris was polishing so I grabbed a rag, some cleaner and worked at getting bug guts off the front end. It seemed like we'd hit every damn bug in 5 counties. After getting her cleaned up somewhat we decided it was time to take a hike around the grounds so I grabbed the camera and we took off.

The thing about the Charlton Park car show is that there's just too damn many cars to be able to shoot them all in one day. If you want to see what we saw click here for Vol 2 or here for Vol 3. We wandered around for awhile trying to be fussy about what cars we shot and which ones we didn't.......and then we hiked out to where the swap meet was and gave that whole area the once over. I was looking for a nice chevy-themed radiator cap and a particular set of valve covers with the old style Chevy logo on em, but really couldn't find anything to spend my money on, other than another Sheltie decal for 5 bucks, so we headed for the food booths.

We both got something to eat and sat on rocks on the hillside to dine. I called home to check in with the wife and called my folks to wish my dad a happy father's day.....after the calls it was back at it again. It continued to look like it was gonna rain any second the whole morning and at one point it did sprinkle for about 5/10 minutes, but nothing real heavy......Until about 10 minutes before the award ceremony was to start, then it started coming down pretty good. We stood around under a tree for awhile, but then that stopped being effective so we moved to the doorway of the nearest house and stood there, out of the rain for the remainder of the awards. As soon as they gave away the motor and someone came forth from their umbrella to claim it, we headed back to the car. Not wanting to head out just yet I climbed in the back seat of the car with the window rolled half way down and shot pics of my favorite rides as then paraded by, headed for home and their shammy (chamois) cloths.

After about 20 minutes of back seat photography I moved around to the driver's seat, fired the beast up and we headed out, in procession mode, to the highway. Once we made it to the highway the traffic thinned out and we were on our way home. Jennette called me on the cell phone as we were heading down the road to home to wish me a happy Father's day, which was kinda neat....never did hear anything from Ri which was a bit disappointing but I guess they were pretty busy with the new house and all. We arrived back in GH about 6ish and just took it easy the rest of the evening.

ADDENDUM: One thing that happened this past week which was real cool was receiving a package from Mr. Frank Jurney, the gentleman I wrote to out in Virginia about getting CD's of the Bluegrass band we'd seen play while out there.....when I opened the package he'd sent I found not 1, Not 2, but 3 CD's chock full of goodness. He'd sent a copy of their new album, not ever released yet and then on the other 2 CD's was the entire performance at Shenendoah Farms. Pretty doggone cool! I'll be designing some neat covers and liners for them of course....just cuz it's fun to do and theraputic too :-)

Time for bed, night.

TC