Alpine Mountain Days 2014

Every year Alpine, Wyoming has a Mountain Days celebration with sites for vendors to display and sell their wares. We enjoyed the event last year an decided to apply for a spot. Now this would be our first outside show and so we had to prepare for it by buying a canopy tent and tables. We also had to be a bit lucky and keep our fingers crossed for good weather.

It snowed heavily the weekend before the celebration but the forecast was for warming temperatures and light winds with little chance for rain. On Thursday we checked in and set up to find out that we would be right across from the food vendors. Not knowing if this would be good or bad I saw the menu and  we decided that at least everyone would pass our booth.

Next to us was a painter who painted feathers with beautiful images of wildlife and on the other side was a vendor, who spray painted tattoos. The beer tent was also close by and well I will tell more about the the effects of alcohol and the locations of the tattoos that people had applied.

The first day of the three day event arrived and we waited patiently as ten o'clock arrived. Almost immediately a man showed up and bought some of our Dry Creek Agate. A little later we sold several pieces of dinosaur bone and we both relaxed as people loved our work. The show slowed as the afternoon wore on but we had had an okay day. We hoped for a big day on Saturday.

The slow time allowed us to walk around and talk with the other vendors and I fell in love with one of Jim Dunn's hand napped knives. His prices were really low and his scrimshaw decoration was every bit as good as any we had seen in Alaska, so I bought one for my personal collection, ( It has a handle of elk bone with scrimshaw of a mountain lion, and is napped from mahogany obsidian).

Saturday morning also started out slow and we were both a little nervous. Around noon the crowd of people increased and suddenly we were swamped. People loved our Wyoming jade pendants, our new style bracelets, our cabs, and slabs, and fossil fish. We barely had time to eat a sausage on a stick, a quesadilla, and a huge mound of deep fried ribbon potatoes, (I even tried a funnel cake and suffice it to say I have no plans on eating any fried food for quite a while).

On Sunday there was a smaller crowd but the beer tent again got busy and between customers we were able to watch as people started to bare unusual spots for the tattoo lady's air brush paint gun.There was nothing really shown that shouldn't be bared but it was close and we both laughed at the effects of too much alcohol, I am glad there weren't tattoos available when I used to imbibe).

The winds stayed down and so the three days passed without out any violent storms that blew down tents and vendors booth. The other vendors told us horror stories and so who knows how long our tent will last. Regardless we had a great show, in fact the best show we have ever had. Now if we could just learn Japanese, German, and Chinese we could tell our stories to the overseas visitors. Heck we still struggle with our Spanish! Clear skies