The latest view from our front door.

End of the Season

The end of the '07 season has arrived with the end of the National Peanut Festival. This also may signal the end of an era that started in the summer of 1965. 42 years in the fairs and festivals is enough. We are putting the business up for sale and have opened another blog, http://tomanan-fotoguys.blogspot.com, to accomplish this end. Until this happens we will be enjoying another season of camphosting at Watson Mill Bridge and Fort Yargo.

Hey, Ed and Gail

Look -- we updated our blog!

What a busy summer

After a whirlwind summer of travels, working at the fairs, and visiting family and friends in Michigan over the summer, we are now back in Georgia. We finished up at the Georgia National Fair last weekend and came up here to Ft. Yargo for some R & R. It was great to see everyone - this is like coming home. It was wonderful to see our family, Eric, LeAnn, Kaylee and Victoria.

It is raining here tonight, much needed rain. It will take weeks of rain to bring the lakes back up to normal levels. Lake Lanier is so low that they say it would have to rain one half inch an hour non-stop for about six weeks to bring it back to normal levels. Not much chance of that happening.

We have been taking it easy here at Fort Yargo. Trying to, in between medical check-ups, taking the grandkids to a movie and visiting with friends here. We will leave on Monday, Oct. 29 and head to Dothan, AL to begin the National Peanut Festival. That will be our last show of the '07 season.

After that we'll go over to Watson Mill Bridge State Park east of Athens to camphost for six weeks.

Early Fall in Michigan's UP

If you saw the firetruck below then you know that we worked out our problems about uploading pictures to the blog. Well, OK, Nancy found the problem. We have been having this type of problem since we installed a new pop-up blocker. We just never know what it's going to block. She fixed it just in time to upload these pictures from the U P taken while we were working the fair at Kinross Mi. These pics were taken at the end of August from the front door of our photo trailer. We can not remember seeing the colors change so early up here. The dull brown shows the lack of rainfall this year in Michigan's U P. Normally the fall colors are blazing up here. We have left the northland and are now in Allegan Mi. for the Allegan Co. Fair.

BCYF

This blog will not let me post a picture today so I will have to be satisfied with a pictureless post.
That's tough to do when you make your living with a camera. We are at the Berrien County Youth Fair in Berrien Springs Mich. This is one of our favorite fairs as it has everything a fairgoer could want. Today there is a large fire truck across the street and they are demonstrating the ladders and lift bucket(aka the cherry picker). The truck has hydraulic lifts that lift the whole firetruck off the ground and makes it level so that they can send the bucket up 4 stories. I'll try again to upload the pictures.

2007 Season

At this date we are two festivals into our 07 season. The first two were new, the Rhapsody in Green at Elkhart, Indiana and the Water Festival at Three Rivers, Michigan. The two shows were good for first timers and we would definately go back to them, however the first show will need some scrutiny as to next years placement. We are in Flint, Mi. today getting ready to leave for Algonac for the Pickerel Festival. We did this fest last year and were very pleased with the outcome.

These festivals are good for trying out new procedures and equipment. There was a problem with the flash attachment which has been fixed and this week we will be installing a new cis for the Epson 1280 printer, (cis stands for continuous ink system). We are hoping this will save us $$$ that we will probably put in our gas tanks. Gas prices have forced a rise in our prices this year. So far the new prices have not been a problem, but this will be the first time we will see last year's customers.

This must be the Bush administration's remedy for the soaring national debt, (now close to 9 tril), raise the rate of inflation so that the debt doesn't look so bad. Sorry I didn't mean to get so political but I really hate to have to raise my prices just because of the stupidity that is coming out of Washington. It's going to be a long 18 months.

We will have more from Algonac with pictures.

Reflections

For the past few months we have been posting about camphosting at Georgia's Ft. Yargo State Park. We left that park after volunteering for five months and are now traveling to Michigan to work the summer fairs.

We very much enjoyed our stay in Ga. and look forword to comming back in the fall. Over the years we have returned to this place for a few weeks at a time because it is only twenty miles from Eric & LeAnn. During this time we have come to know the staff and now regard them as old friends, so much so that returning is like comming home.

So we reflect on the incredible beauty of the park and the hard working people on the staff who keep it that way. Eric Bently (not to be confused with our son Eric Doyle), Claire, Artie, Cathleen, Debbie, Kiri, Jessica, Larry, Rhonda, Eloise, Wes, Chris, Lucas, Jud and our gatekeepers, we want to say thank you for your hard work and your friendship.

You are our extended family.

Leo & Peg

Leo & Peg Murray, from Flushing, Mi. took over as camphosts after our short stint nine years ago. They have had that post all these years and have become very good friends of ours. Also it is common knowledge among several park managers that leo & Peg have set the standard for camphosting in Georgia State Parks.

The Littlest Ranger

Meet Kevin Murray. He is the grandson Of Leo & Peg Murry who have been camphosts at Ft. Yargo for the last nine years. It is well known that Kevin is one of the hardest working volunteers at the park.