Cranberry Festival, Eagle River, WI

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your understanding regarding the lack of blog updates this month. As many of you know, I have been travelling this past few weeks to shows, speaking engagements, and family events. I arrived home a couple of hours ago. Yea! This time, there were 1,350 miles of driving. That amount alone is enough, but when you add to it 1,600 other miles I drove the week or so before this past two week trip -- it adds up to a lot of driving!

In the next week, I'll try to catch up everyone with the various photos I've taken during all the excursions.

This posting I am including a few photos from the Cranberry Festival in Eagle River, Wisconsin. It is located around 4 1/2 hours southwest of Grand Marais. Eagle River is just over the Wisconsin border in the center of the angular slope that represents the Upper Peninsula's western junction with Wisconsin. The show was held on October 3rd and 4th. It takes place in a community of around 2,000 residents that is inundated by around 40,000 festival goers. The weather was rainy and cold, but the people showed up and were quite tenacious with their rain gear, umbrellas, and winter clothes. I want to thank my friend, Jill, for helping me yet again at another show. Her husband, Gerald, is still teaching. But since Jill is retired from teaching, she gets to go on a couple of extra adventures a year. I could not have handled the crowd on Saturday, without your help, Jill. I'd also like to thank my sister, Sandra, for driving up from Wausau, WI to help and visit on Sunday.

Below is a photo of some of the fair workers. Aren't they cute!



The focus of the festival is the art. It is a juried show that features a lot of talented artists. I'm not sure the total number of booths, but there must have been at least 300 or 400 artists! There were also several booths that sold various cranberry products.



Of course, there were fresh cranberries for sale!



I chose to pay extra this year to move inside one of the "circus" tents. That was a good decision. The wind and rain would have been more of a problem if I had my own pop-up tent that would have been even more vulnerable to the weather. Here are a few shots of the new lamps I brought to the show. Although I had a run on selling lamps out of the museum gift shop in September, I still have not sold these two lamps. If you are interested, send me an email to karen@agatelady.com to ask me more about these two lamps. I also still have the tower lamp plus a couple others in inventory. I will offer free shipping or delivery (if you live down state near where I'll be travelling in November), to anyone who sends me an email mentioning this blog posting.