I know that I have been MIA since the middle of August. There has been A LOT going on. Part of the reason I haven’t written is because I wasn’t sure if I could keep all the pieces under wraps that I needed to keep under wraps if I was blogging so I just decided to take the safest road and not post about anything. Plus, between work and planning there was not really any time to write anyway.
At Atlantian 30 Year my cadet Wistric Oftun was made a White Scarf. Having broken his foot at Pennsic he inadvertently added a bit of a wrinkle to the plans but nothing that couldn’t be planned around and he did play his prize at 30 Year. It was very awesome and I am rather proud of him. His ceremony is available on YouTube for anyone who would like to watch it.
Last weekend at Coronation my husband was set on vigil and elevated to the Order of the Pelican. The vigil was perfect, the ceremony was beautiful (we planned a virtues ceremony for him), and it was truly a wonderful event. We did get video of his elevation ceremony as well but it’s not up on YouTube yet.
As you might imagine though there are a lot of stories from these past several weeks and you would be right. 
I plan on spending the next few posts telling many of them but I thought I would start with one of my favorites: The Great 30 Year Debacle.
Since Wistric was going to be made a White Scarf in the morning at 30 Year before the fencing started we needed to be there early. And as I’m currently conducting a rather extensive experiment regarding camping at events (which I will go into later) Coty and I decided to camp. Well, maybe it went more like this:
Me: “I don’t really want to stay at the hotel for 30 Year. Plus it’s pretty pricey. Why don’t we camp? We can get some people together and it will be fun!”
Coty: “Whatever you want to do, Princess.”
So we proceed to plan to camp. It turned out though that pretty much everyone we talked to about camping had already made plans to either stay at a hotel or with friends. So we we decided to try throwing in with the WH Baronial Camp.
And that brings us to Friday afternoon before 30 Year. We’ve packed the truck and the trailer. We have double checked that we have everything we need and we manage to leave the house on time at 3pm as planned. Everything goes pretty smoothly until we get about 40 min from site. That’s the point when, after driving 3o min down narrow switchbacks to get to site (which is supposed to be across the street from James Madison’s Montepellier), our Garmin decides to bring us to what we can only guess is the back door to the Montepellier estate because when our Garmin says “You have arrived at your destination” it’s a goat path leading to a cattle gate.
There is no place to turn around. We’re on a narrow back country Virginia road with a trailer and an Expedition. So we drive another 15 min down the road before we could find an abandoned store where we could turn around. We drove back into town to ask directions at a gas station only to find out that we were going the right way but we didn’t go far enough. (BTW, when the very nice person giving you directions tells you to “turn at the cross roads where the old ___ store used to be” make sure to clarify whether or not you will be able to recognize “the cross roads” or “where the old ___ store used to be” before you start.
So it’s back down the switch backs for us.
After another 40-45min down the winding switch backs, through “the cross roads” and past “where the old ___ store used to be” we make it to site and check in. We are two hours late, it’s pitch black, and it takes us another 20 min to find the Windmasters’ Hill camp. We finally find camp and some of our camp mates but it’s 9:00pm, we haven’t had dinner, and our camp steward has also been delayed so we don’t know where our tent should go.
So we do what the most sensible thing we can think of….
We drop the trailer off in parking so it’s not blocking camp and go find a hotel. We spent the night at a very nice Best Western about 20 min from site. They had a great restaurant where we had a fabulous dinner and a lovely breakfast. The next morning we were back on site and set up our tent and dayshade with plenty of time to spare before things got started.
After the initial hiccups and the early morning rain on Saturday (which thankfully happened after we had set up) the event was fabulous. My only regret was that after Wistric’s White Scarf Ceremony I could not get my head back together to go fight. But it was still a lovely event. I got to hang out with friends I don’t see often enough, watched the jousting, and enjoyed a lovely evening at the Elephant Stomp.
