Cherokee People, Cherokee Pride

We are in Cherokee, Ia at the Cherokee County Fair.  This is our 4th year.  It has been fun watching this fair come back to life and grow over the past four years.  They have made improvements on every front: Infrastructure, acts, events, and vendors. We are even in a new and better location this year.

Since this is a repeat fair we have brought a bunch of new stunts, tricks and routines to the fair. Naturally, we kept al the old favorites. The only down part is the absence of Mami, Titus, and Miles. Of course it would be nice if Jim were here too, but he has taken his own path now. God Bless him.
Mami and the others will catch up with us as we head east to New York for the Lawrence Fair in Gouverneur NY.
Here are some fun pix from the fair:

 This hangs outside our Museum of the Weird. Those (that) little guy(s) arre still in their jar in that tent. Along with the shrunken head, the huge flea, the strange thing and that thing that was found in that attic in TN.

 Being from Africa the Sultan is loving the heat.  He has been eating and strolling. He makes his debut in the show tonight....his first magic trick. 

 This is Mr. Wiley. He lives right next to the fair and has been our fan since 2013. He greeted me on the day we arrived.  When he heard we were looking for a ride into town to pick up some supplies (Mami and Miles has our chase van) he cheerfully volunteered.  He brought his grand nieces to our shows on Thursday.  Supposed to be back tonight. 

 Pre show Selfie. 

Team Rock is a martial arts impact show that is sharing the grounds with us.  I met the crew and they seem like real nice folks.  My girls have been enjoying their show. 

 Red Goggles is here with the son of the food vendor next door to the show. They have been really kind to us as well. This morning this boy's dad picked up some dog food and ice-cream for Vic's birthday when he ran into town. 

 Red Goggles has been making his rounds here. Tonight T Master goes out. 

Over these past 4 years the girls have become good friends with the family that has the petting zoo. Here are a couple of their animal friends.  The baby is Timmy. 

 We walked into town today becaus Victor Jr wanted to visit the antique and secondhand store we always visit when in Cherokee. This guy was just laying along one of the downtown building minding his own business. Maybe a milk snake? (ampropeltis triangulum, commonly known as a milk snake or milksnake, (French: Couleuvre tachetée; Spanish: Culebra-real coralillo)^[1] is a species of king snake. There are 24 subspecies of milk snakes. Lampropeltis elapsoides, the scarlet kingsnake, was formerly classified as the subspecies L. t. elapsoides, but is now recognized as a distinct species.^[1] The subspecies have strikingly different appearances, and many of them have their own common names. Some authorities suggest that this species may be split into several separate species.^[1] They are not venomous or otherwise dangerous to humans.^{[2][3]) wiki}

Met a fireman just standing in front of the firehouse.  He wasn't talkative so I did most the talking. Nice guy. I loved how stoic he was. 

On other issues, I have to say I love Skype. It has allowed me to not only talk but see Mami and the others.  I even got to chat a little with Titus today.  What a blessing to have this technology. 

Well, more to come....stand by. 

On the road to Minnesota....

Back on tour!
Though between our Robot-Rangers and our Circus we have had a busy couple of months between NJ-KY-TX and TN we officially counted our summer tour take off a couple of weeks back when we hit the road for a non-stop run that will take us to November.

Things got off to a rough start when Titus managed to break his arm when his arm got stuck behind his wheelchair and he torqued it. Because of his disability and his hypertensive state the docs felt the need to operate and put a plate in to prevent his muscles from jerking the bone out of set position.  That meant Mami and Miles had to stay behind and be with him. So we started down three folks.
Btw the operation went well and after the post op visit in a week or so they will reconnect with us along the route.

Here Titus is post op with a huge card that our church family made for us and all the kids at VBS signed.  Berea Baptist is an awesome church family.

First stop was Redwood Falls, MN (Redwood County Fair).

There was a fork in the road:

Before I talk about the fair I have to share the trip to MN. After leaving KY I am remiss that I could rarely find an Interstate or Highway in the four states we crossed that didn't have near third world country roads. I am not kidding. I have watched the infrastructure across America approach third world status over the past ten years. A few years ago we had a show in Canada and found the roads already there when outside of the bigger cities. My cousin in Ky said it was because they have no money to fix the roads due to social spending. (I am only sharing one possible cause.) Is that the reason here? I don't blame the road workers, I am sure they are great. It must lay at the bureaucracy and politicians.   Regardless, the roads shook the snot out of the RV, we had things falling off and it killed the computer board on the water heater. (At RV parks I hear similar stories from many RVers.) Blue state roads seem to be the worse. Pictures to follow.
OK, road rant over.

OK, Redwood Falls, is a cute little town. I love the stores in the town and the fairgrounds are pretty nice. The folks running the fair were very cordial and very helpful. The vendors were cool too. The kettle corn folks next to our stage kept us in kettle corn all four days. They had the traditional flavors but the Misses of the family had a creative culinary mind. Creamy Dill was the flavor d'jour on Thursday, Grandma's Apple Pie on Friday, Chicago (cheddar, caramel and kettle) on Saturday and Margarita on Sunday.  There was also Sincker doodle, and a test taste called Garlic-Parm, which was my fav.  The min-donut vendor next door was also golden. Turned out we had worked together in Florida two years ago, though they didn't know it was me since I was Maximus G (a robot-ranger).

The shows all turned out well. Our first show had over 350 folks being daycare-daycamp day.
The rest of the nine shows or so had big crowds as well. The last show each day always had over 150-250 folks.    Here are some pictures:

Forgetful Bear doing his thang!

 Princess Amelia's Hoop art

T Master doing his Thang!

 Our little layout

Friends whom we knew from Berea that moved to MN came down to visit....Olivia and her snake!

My kids waiting for dinner.

 Goofing around.

 Good crowds.

Princess Olivia hanging around. 

Nice couple. 

Fair week went well. Not a single rain day, for the midwest that says something.  Except for a 93 degree day on Saturday that kept crowds away until evening, each day was low 80s with gentle winds.   

Pack up went smoothly.  We awoke at a comfortable hour on Monday and drove to a store and restocked the rv food and supplies. Then we were off to Jackson. A crazy hour and ten minutes away....by "crazy" I mean not crazy at all....except the whacked out roads of Windom, MN...

This was a nice part of the road in Windom. But compared to Instate Hwys these were nice. OY

We did a ton of Laundry at the RV park and some practice (that is an everyday thing) watched some dvds and swam.  For our second day we did a 2 mile trek into the town and visited a couple of thrift/antique stores, checked out the 100+ year buildings and stopped by the library to get some aircon, and a gas station for some cold drinks.   Olivia found a cool real leather jacket for $13 and Amelia found a bathing suit. Victor found a nice knife and I enjoyed paying for most of it. OY!

Here are some pictures from the town. (Thanks to the Chamber of commerce for the town map and lots of tips as to where to go and what to see. )

 I found a Penny Farthing. OK it was just a picture. What a ride. Hehehe.

 View of their courthouse...puts some statehouses to shame.....

Here is a pix of the library...they had cool color sheets to color as we waited fora store to open.
Below is a picture of cake pans you can borrow from the library. A first for me..

  

 I should mention the trek into the town was two miles and mostly downhill.....
We deserved that cold drink by the time we got there. The girls weren't keen on going at first, but, I made them go. And as is almost always the case they ended up admitting they would had regretted it having seen and done what we did.   Old store and buildings are easy to pass by or ignore. But when you stop and check them out you end up seeing stuff better than any museum could provide.

 Like this old fallout shelter notice. I mentioned to some folks in town and most had no idea it was right there on a building on the main drag.   This is 1950s era stuff!

 Here is the nice jacket Olivia got as a bargain. 

Later on today we did some more swimming and the kids held a classic golf championship n the fabulous exclusive RV Park Golf course. Olivia won the first round.

Shhhh. He's about to hit the ball.
Victor won round 2...then they quit and went off to play basketball.

I realized I did not give a wrap up of the gigs prior to the tour tack-off. So.....

I emceed the 2nd annual Madrock Duck Derby the Saturday before our Tuesday departure.   It is part of the Berea Chamber of Commerce sponsored events (along with the town of Livingston)  The river was unsafe due to lots of rain so the Livingston FD brought a pool of sorts over and the ducks were dropped and mixed by kids...Princess Amelia is in the cowgirl hat.  It all worked out well, but it was quite warm.

Here is a video a local online news group did:

https://www.facebook.com/wcyofm/videos/10155700301629728/

A week prior to the derby we performed at the Casey county Fair in hard to get there from here Liberty KY.

Once at the fair we had 2 of the four days with great weather. One day had to be canceled altogether due to rain.  But the last day made up for it. According to the fair it was a record attendance for them.

On the note of record attendance, fairs I've attended and rv parks are telling me that after 10 years of lowering numbers it seems like the folks are getting some consumer confidence back....read into to that whatever you want.  but that is good news for everyone.  First time in 10 years an rv park was worried as we didn't have a reservation. If we stayed longer, we couldn't. 

Anyway.  It has been fun in spite of rough roadways and Titus' medical thing.  Folks around America are wonderful. We are blessed to be in this country. God bless America and you. 

We are Back to Blogging!  2017 Season tour began this past Saturday with our Kick off show fundraiser at Berea's Madison Southern High School for the Chamber of Commerce's Scholarship program.  The turn out was awesome. This will be the start of our yearly kick off...raising money to increase scholarships.  

It was our first BIG show in Berea, KY, our new hometown. We wanted to find a worthy cause to do our fundraiser. So as a member I realized their scholarship fund and their wide reach to the community (to clarify, there are lots of wonderful needy groups, but a show like ours, unknown to the area in general, needed a group that could reach all aspects of society and the Chamber, representing all the business' of the town, was a great fit. )

The show was even covered by Fox 56 out of Lexington to be part of their "Spirit of the Bluegrass" segment on the April 26th 10pm news. So Marvin Bartlet came down from Lexington and spent the day with us.

It was a great turn out and a really fun show.  I am disappointed with the stage lighting we brought. On tape they look absolutely dismal. Hind sight is 20/20 as we had some wonderful lighting that we didn't bring. (to explain, we bought these "new" lights a couple fo towns over from a group that no longer needed them. Well, they were dim. We never tested them for brightness, though the lamps are in a large instrument, their luminescence was far from what the instrument could handle....that means upgrading all the bulbs (lamps) to a higher quality, brighter bulb.  Chaching....for the person who will sell us the kits.)

Everyone invovled in the night's program did a wonderful job. Thanks Chamber, volunteers, Fox 56, Berea Citizen, The Cougar, 100.7, and everyone.

Got our 2017 Kick off show Saturday the 18th. In Berea......Get tickets at www.eventbrite.com

2016 Tour Begins

We had a sort of kick off last month in London, Ky.  We self-produced a stage show using the High School.  The real goal was to get all the equipment cleaned-up, set-up, and gathered together after having been stored in several locations and shipped here from Cali.  It took a good month getting it all to the point that it will look good on tour. We also wanted to have a venue to perform some of the new stuff.  The show itself was pretty good. The turn out was lousy. Didn't even come close to breaking even. Albeit, we had less than 2 weeks to advertise because it took the school a month to approve our use.  So in the end there was a lesson in self producing out here....that is, book the venue way early. And do a better job advertising.

OK, that said, the show is all ready to go. We are adding some cool new stuff.  We have expanded the Enchanted Garden, have an illusion to make Henry the pig appear (oh, yeah, we added a pig), and all the old routines have been updated,  modernized, and new costumes. We are also bringing back some stunts and tricks that have been rotated out for a few years.