Crazy wild mountainfest!

I'm back! And I survived Mountainfest 2005.
Over the next week I'll tell you all about our adventures in Merritt and yes we did get half naked cowboy pics!
The festival takes place on a working cattle ranch. The cattle are usually moved to upper pastures in the summer which leaves the lower land for festival activities and on site camping. Merritt is situated in a hot, dry part of our province which means that everything is dry and dusty. And there are no trees in campsite A where we camp. No trees means no shade. The ranch is huge I'm sure hundreds of acres. The pictures above are of two of the 9 separate campgrounds. It's believed there were over 150,000 people there this year.
I camped with my friend and my brother. All I can say is thank you Lonny(my brother) for having a motor home. Last year I tented it, not a good thing.
We were a day late and arrived on Tuesday. It was a cloudy windy day and when we checked in we found out that we had to work in three hours. We did a grocery run, set up camp, had a couple of beers and went straight to work. I'm not a beer drinker but in Merritt beer is one of the main food groups. Yvonne and I work in the beer gardens selling beer tickets. I am continually amazed at how much money people throw away on booze. Tickets are 4.50 each and many, many people will spend more than a 100.00 a day on beer tickets. The first night was steady but never busy. I think the first night is my favorite for the time we get to spend chatting with people.
I'm going to pirate a few pics from the Merritt web site just to give an idea of the dichotomy of experiences. On one hand there are the people there for the music and time spent with friends then there is camp site 'C'. Camp site 'C' is crazy. Hundreds of young people, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. And nudity. It's amazing to me that you can walk from one campsite to another and find such a huge difference.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about the people we see in Merritt. The co-ordinators, the body guards and the accountants. Maybe I'll even have some pics of six pack tot'n cowboys.