Rendezvous

I'll try to keep the details short because I have quite a few pictures. We are members of the Breckenridge Buckskinners, and we host a reenactment of the fur trade, or mountain man rendezvous, in April of each year. Here is our camp on one of the seemingly rare days when it's not raining, snowing, or so windy that it blows tents over! This encampment is ten days of hard work with no electricity, no batteries, no matches, no "petroleum based fuels", just the tools any normal person in 1837 would have had... while living off the land as a trapper. We do, however, manage to live quite comfortably - note the WOOD BURNING STOVE peeking out from the right hand corner of the tent - yeah, I can get it up to ninety degrees in there during a snow storm - no problem! Also means I don't have to cook outside!
Here's Duke conducting some gunsmithing business with one of our Scottish shooters...

And here's son-in-law Bob keeping the cooking fire going... on one of those "cold" days...brrrr! But he's from Michigan - he was in heaven!

Shopping!

Rendezvous generally has a "traders' row" where all the vendors sell their wares...

Rendezvous kids lined up for daily awards in shooting, archery, tomahawk throwing...

We also like to do a summer rendezvous - one where we are NOT part of the working crew! This one was near Johnsondale, CA, but sadly, the landowner made other plans for this gorgeous piece of property along the Kern River... This was our camp in 2001 with daughter and son-in-law, and the picture below that is our VIEW from that camp...

Needless to say, I didn't get much accomplished that year - no beading, no shooting, no hikes, no archery, no leatherwork, no fishing, just sat there enjoying the view for ten days... oh yeah, and making sure everyone had breakfast and dinner!

More Shopping!

In 2002 the big McNally fire swept through there literally a couple hours after we broke camp and headed home. Over 150,000 acres were burned. You can see the bare areas in the background, but the fire went through "our meadow" so quickly that although most trees were lost (note all the stumps), some merely had scorched trunks. We returned in following years, but 2005 was our last year, and instead of hundreds of people, there were only fifteen camps. I have to say, I enjoyed that one more than any other rendezvous I had ever been to. We had an entire meadow to ourselves, and it was just incredible. And no matter what, there is always a potluck!

Hmmm... guess I didn't keep that very short, did I!