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Ari and I left at about 640am MST on Tuesday and started our drive to Gulf Wars..our plan was to arrive in Houston which we did at midnight our time, 2 am local time. It was a good drive, took good breaks and were very pleased with the stops along the way. Chick-fil-a and Sonic seem to be our favs and that is okay. Things to note about Texas: The west side smells like oil and skunks. Bizarre but true. We stayed at a lovely holiday inn express in Houston and that was very nice. I luv this chain, they have comfy beds, good pillows, faboo showers and not a bad hot breakfast all included. We got on the road about 8am local time....yes, very little sleep. Got on the road and stopped off at Boudin's (Thanks

ickaimp for the reference) in Baton Rouge for good creole food and we both nommed on the seafood gumbo and hushpuppies. Got back on the road and I finished my baby booty and started on the afghan I need to make this week. We arrived on site about 415pm local and got through troll and then headed to the vague directions of where we would be camping.
Picture of the booty:

Vallurwulf said, drive past this point until you get lost and then call him for directions. Well, we stopped the truck, asked for directions, got a "I just say Lloric go that way" (opposite of where we were headed) and I pulled out the iPhone and looked him up on the chiv page and found his heraldry and we were parked right out side of his camp. Now to call it a camp isn't correct. Its a small village. They have permanent houses...its so cool. Ari took lots of pictures in camp. We pulled the trailer around and were shown our spot and we had already trained help in yurt erection and were setup in no time flat. Funny thing. Sir Lloric actually built Ari's yurt. How cool is that?! It was meant to come and camp with House of the Clan Gambit. We set up the inside of the yurt, got the beds together and then went to park the trailer and walk back at 620pm. We got ambushed at Ansteorran Royal by various folks who knew us and finally got back to camp in time for dinner. I don't remember what we ate but it was good and hot and tasty. Got into garb and hung out in camps, hit the Calontir Party where we ran in to the niece and then we traveled about and looked at the site before collapsing in bed.

Got up at 8am and had a nummy breakfast and got I got into armor to fight the ravine battle for a short time before I taught my classes. I got about 45mins of fighting in and had a good time. Though the spears have no idea of what to do with a shield and none of the spears knew how to tag team. Got off of the field, changed clothes and headed to the A&S area. I taught documentation which went really well and then headed to the textiles tent to chat with the ladies there. They had spinning wheels going, a class on textiles prep going and I got to sit in and chat. Having a fiber geek at home helps. I sat and worked on my blanket and enjoyed my time before teaching 10 books. I had about 15-20 people per set and that was nice. Then I headed out to drop off the basket of doom and go shopping. What a site. Very nice spread out merchant's area and I ended up sitting down to chat with Lucretia and Hrotgar from Nortshield in their bedoin booth. I helped Lu wind off some yarn for Ursula and just chatted for a good long while. I then spotted Sofya la Rus and went all fan girl on her. I hope I didn't scare her but we chatted for a good while before we both had to go off to things. I knew dinner was close and I arrived just in time. (This was a theme). Clan Gambit is like the del a Roc of Glen Abhean. An entire household of pelicans and squires and Ari and I were treated like princesses. Seriously, we couldn't do anything and it was lovely to sit and talk interkingdom anthropology. A few folks in camp had come to my classes and that was cool too. Lots more questions etc. All good. Thursday was midnight madness so we went shopping. It was such a nice night for it. We ended up stopping a lot and chatting with folks. I got to meet Yolo and he a very neat guy. Also sat and chatted with Anita and Kit and Johannes and got to meet Ari's Laurel Kendrick. We did a bit of shopping too. I got one of

attacklaurel's coif patterns, got to see

kassrants and also chatted up the girls at Ash and Griffen and got the Rus cups we've been needing. Headed to bed a bit early but it was good.

Friday dawned and we got up, Ari and I had classes and she was going to be fighting in the afternoon. My classes went really well again and I took pictures throughout the site before and chatted more with the ladies in the textiles booth. Got to hang out with

missdoom and see Shava too. I made it out to the battle field just in time to watch it end. Ooops. I did get some pictures of Ari in armour looking awesome. Then GP the prince of Ansteorra had business with us. He and his lady had admired our work (wooby coats) and we are currently in negotiations...we shall see. But its cool how our word fame has gotten out there. Tee hee! I got more shopping done including hand woven fabric from Artemesia. Its lovely. Got home in time for dinner and then it was time to get prettyfied for the Known World Party. We skipped grand court (hey, its not our war) and we enjoyed chatting with camp folks. The Aten AI has evil plans afoot ...tee hee. Headed out to the party which was getting preempted by a pelican ceremony (Mary Grace, who is an awesome lady wow!) We headed over to the Northshield cabin and chatted with folks for a while before heading back to the party. The party was an octoberfest with all of the ladies of the rose in cute, short outfits getting donations for Susan K. Gorman, beer, drinks, pretzels and brats. So much fun. We hung out with lots of folks from all over including Duke Sean from Artemsia, our own Lord Khaz (the good one) and then with Lloric and diana from Gambit. Wow, what a time and I fell in luv with the imperial stout. Ari and I got some dancing in with the jingle bunnies. Then some drunk farm hands arrive in borrowed tunics and we peeled off to find Jax one of Llori'cs squires who was awesome and got us water and introduced us to William, the King of Glenn Abhann. He was very awesome and when he found out that I had worked on the silver horde, he was all fan boy on me. It was so cool. Of course, the only piece I was wearing was the ring I never take off. I promised later to see him to show off the whole thing. We hit bed really really late (130am) but were okay with that.

Saturday dawned, we got up, though we didn't want to and got breakfast. Got back to the yurt and it smelled like dancers...ewww. Got that taken care of and got into armor. I made it out to the castle with plenty of time to get with the Northshield army. The castle battle was fun and northshield did good. We had a lot of fun, routed the enemy around but we were not the weakest link. Hrodir, Hagan and the Kingdom commander were all wearing gator stuffed heads as crests on their helms. The mouths moved on strings and it was lots of hilarity. I got lots of good fighting in, got to watch Sean schooling some knights, delivered a present to Robert Magnus from Mingo and all in all had a good day. Then Ari and I headed back to shower and get the yurt packed. We wanted all non-essentials packed up and we managed and got them all into the trailer. Dinner was faboo again and then it was kingom court. It was odd to sit in a foreign court but we sat behind the B&B of Axemoor and got some insights on what was happening. They had a keg at the back of court for those of us that got "bored". It was budlight but it was good. When court ended it started to rain and we followed the TRM Glenn Abhann back to their condo to show off the horde. It was the crazy aftermath of court so we waited and chatted with folks and William was ecstatic when I handed him a pile of silver. Scotty was there too and looked at stuff and the wooden stool I brought of ivan's got perused too. We ventured out to the camp and it was coming down. But wool is good and we got back to chat with folks under the dining tent and then it was too bed. We didn't sleep well due the buckets of rain and the worry about travel in the morning but we managed a few hours I think. Got up and got things packed up in our jammies. It had stopped raining but we had snow instead. It didn't stick but at least it didn't get things wet too much. We got the trailer packed with everyone's help and then changed clothes in one of the houses, hit the privies (we had flushies across the street), said our good byes and headed off of site at 10AM local. We drove all of the way to San Antonio in a crazy headwind. We arrived in San Antonio about 8pm, hit a local steakhouse, had a nummy dinner and then headed to a holiday inn express about a mile away. All good. Had a nice shower and we both were slathering on moisturizer. We were asleep before 11pm and got up at 7am to hit the road.

The wind had died and that was good. We made good time but it was a long drive. I got about half of the afghan done. We had the best quote from Sonic yet. The tot box has "Fries are from France, Tots are from Awesome!" and we stopped and picked up wild flowers on the way too.
Picture of the flowers:

Pulled into my cul-de-sac at about 725pm local and was greeted by the hubby and richard (who is such an artisan now by royal decree! We got most of my stuff out of the trailer and then Ari left and I got to hand out gifties and have meatloaf. Mel had bought another spinning wheel (we have 5 now and a great wheel coming (sigh!)) while I was gone but he got a cool chair and cleaned up the kitchen. Guess butterfly got into the donuts and got an entire one to herself while I was gone. We stayed up to about 10 and I was done. Very, very tired. So, that is the trip. Very inspired to do a few things now, got plans for my new coronet putting in my head, getting gifties planned and just all in all happy we went. Course while I was gone I got served for my traffic ticket in December so I get to to pay that. Ooops. All good.

Well, time to get the work laptop up and running and start getting going.