Back From I-Fest

This is my first post since my return to Kentucky after 3 days at the International Puppetry and Ventriloquism Festival in Burbonais, Illinois. I had a great time, met lots of wonderful people and learned more useful ventriloquism and Children's ministry skills. I have lots of things to write about and will be posting them over the next week.

Also I made a side trip to Chicago. I visited both the White Sox and Cubs stadiums. I had two different experiences at each and I'll give you that details later on.

Let me start with some details of my arrival trip.

The Road To Watseka
I left for my trip on Thursday morning July 10 at about 7:20 AM. I had my road maps and my googel maps directions with me. Because of a mix up with the way I copied the directions I didn't think I had the right directions. I looked at the map and decided to take a different route that I thought was easier. As it turned out my new route was about 90 minutes more driving than the original directions would have been. It didn't look that far on the map.

Finally I got off Route 57 in Illinois and took Rt 24 to the town of Watseka. The drive on Rt 24 was about 25 miles. I had booked the hotel online at Expedia.com because the website said that it was near where I-fest was being held. I quickly realized from looking at the map I was not "close" at all.

To get to the Olivet Nazarene College campus and I-fest I would have to drive back the 25 miles to Rt 57 then drive 32 more miles north. That meant that I was nearly 60 miles from where I needed to be. The website had severely underestimated the location of my hotel for which I had prepaid.

By checking the map and asking a couple of people at the convenience store next to my hotel I found a short cut to an Rt 57 entrance ramp that would only require me to drive about 10 miles to get the festival.

Once I got to the Olivet Nazarene campus I found the building where the festival was and checked in. I got oriented with the locations, times and places of the various events I wanted to attend over the next 2 days then settled in for the evening ceremonies in the auditorium.

From 9-10:30 I went to another building to watch a ventriloquist competition and then drove back to the hotel. I was really tired on the drive back to the hotel. It was raining and I made a wrong turn. I got lost about 3 times and ended up following signs back to Rt 57, driving south to the Rt 24 exit and once again driving the 30 miles east to Watseka and my hotel.

Before calling it a day I looked at the next day's schedule for the festival and circled the classes and events I wanted to attend. The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start but once I got used to the hotel, the geography of the area and the details of the festival the stage was set for having a wonderful time over the next two days. More on that next time.