Hello faithful readers!
Seems the summer and much of the winter has gotten away from us as we have been busy doing life. I will attempt to update all on the past several months of our activities in this post and hopefully will do a better job at being current!
Our summer was spent housed in our beautiful hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colorado as we pursued livelihoods and attempted to keep current with friends and families nearby. Since our home was still under a lease, we were fortunate to secure a neat place up near the ski area for the summer. Part of the agreement included me doing some remodel work for the properties owner. That work included replacing the walkway and deck floorings with TREX, working to update his kitchen with new cabinet doors and drawer fronts, tiling two bathrooms, wainscotting a guest bathroom and refinishing several interior doors which had been damaged by dog scratching. As expected, this kept me quite busy during the work week and I enjoyed seeing the remodel take shape and how nice it all looked when completed. Suz went back to running her housekeeping business and it didn't take too long before we felt like we were "back amonst 'em".
Along with these "day jobs" we spend considerable time and effort marketing our Allergic to Cities products at several Colorado-based farmers markets and crafts shows. We especially found great success with the Steamboat Springs Farmer's Market (Saturday mornings) and the Town of Dillon Farmer's Market (Friday mornings). Although it put quite a bump in our schedules, we were very pleased to see the continuing progress and acceptance of our shirts and hats. As the sales receipts were good, the connections we made were even better. Meeting new friends and rekindling old relationships seemed to be the name of the game and we relished these personal interactions. From all of this, we decided to officially take the show "on the road" this winter.
So in September, we purchased a used 28' travel trailer, had our friend Matt Scharf put some great graphics together for wrapping it, and prepared to head to Florida for the Arts and Craft show circuit. We pulled out of Colorado righ after Thanksgiving, just ahead of an approaching snow storm, and headed to Texas to try a couple of shows there, along the way.
We arrived in Amarillo our first night out, to awake the next morn to about 6" of snow all over everything. The roads were icy and cars and trucks were skidding off the road everywhere. After checking the weather map, we carefully headed our rig south toward San Antonio for our next layover. We left the snow behind about 30 miles down the road and were glad to had dry pavement to pull our trailer. Arriving in San Antonio that night, we found the temps still VERY cold and were disappointed that our "warmer climate getaway" seemed clouded by cold weather, even as as we traveled south.
While in San Antonio, we braved the cold enough to do a couple of touristy things, like visit the Alamo, but were not happy to have to continue wearing out cold weather gear. Continuing south, we stopped over at some sailing friends home in Beeville, Texas for an evening. It was great reconnecting with them and although Karl was fighting a nasty cold, we all shared some fun remembrances of our time in the Bahamas together. The next morning, we headed off to Corpus Christi for our first scheduled show of the season. Upon arrival, we put up our tent and display and waited for customers. And waited. The weather was STILL very cold (spelled R-E-C-O-R-D C-O-L-D S-P-E-L-L) and attendance was dismal. We made a few sales to the brave souls who did appear, but soon decided to break camp, lick our wounds, and head off to a local seafood restaurant to enjoy some fine cuisine. Suz enjoyed some fabulous fresh oysters on the half-shell, while I gorged on peel-and-eat shrimp. Felt somewhat satisfied with our day, after all.
Next day we moved our rig toward Houston area where more great sailing friends lived. David and Vicky welcomed us into their beautiful new home and we enjoyed several nights of revelry with them. Leaving, we headed off toward a small town outside of Houston where our next show was to be held. Since the rain and cold continued to plauge us, we wound up canceling that show before we even put up our tent!
Did I mention the cold yet? Oh yes, it continued. Record breaking cold spells followed us all the way across the US as we moved east. Everywhere we went, people let us know "we've never seen anything like this" over and over! We headed to Savannah to see Suz' Pop for a short layover before our scheduled arrival in Florida just before Christmas. HAd a super time in Georgia with him and then begrudgingly headed off toward our rented house in Port Charlotte, Florida, just north of Punta Gorda. We arrived on Christmas Eve and, yes, it was RECORD BREAKING COLD SPELLS all over again. We were starting to feel like we were living in the movie Groundhog Day. Florida houses are not equipped for cold and are not insulated, the heaters don't work well and our patience was just about used up. For one entire month, we tried to stay warm while doing our scheduled shows during the month of January along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Some days were better than others, but mostly it was just lousy weather all along the way. We did 16 shows during the month, some better than others. Although the gulf coast show circuit proved somewhat successful, but not as good as we'd hoped for, so we decided to head across the state to the Atlantic side and try that coast next.
So we have now arrived in Key Largo, Florida, the northernmost of the Florida Keys, to do our first show on this side of the state this weekend. It is called the Key LArgo Stone Crab and Seafood Festival. The weather has finally cooperated with bring in higher temps and sunny skies but this weekend calls for 40% chance of rain. Sound familiar? We're troopers, though and the show will go on! We'll let all know how it went in our next blog.
Hope to be able to see some of you out there along our travels.
