2010 TOUR A SUCCESS!
A sold out crowd visited 12 houseboats that were open for touring on the afternoon of September 12th. The recent unpredictable weather cooperated with sunshine and it was a lovely day. The theme for this year's tour was from funky to fabulous, 100 years of houseboat living, and included a wide variety of houseboats -- historical, artsy, newly decorated, and all the funkiness and fabulous points in between. Older small cottages to larger modern examples of houseboat styles and décor - there was something for everybody on this tour no matter what their taste!
Electric boats and mini luxury buses ferried/shuttled people from one side of the lake to the other all afternoon and volunteers turned out en masse to help tour attendees navigate their way through the tour, answer questions, and tell stories about our unique community.
Otis' BBQ was once again here on the east side of the lake serving his delicious ribs, baked beans, potato salad, brisket sandwiches and hotdogs. On the west side of the lake, a taco truck served up great Mexican food - including a vegan version of tacos. Complimentary espresso drinks were available at the espresso cart throughout the day.
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Waiting to board an electric boat to ferry to the west side. Boats ran continuously so the waits were short and the crowd smiles. |
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Host Ed Waddington answers questions for visitors at the Tenas Chuck moorage as Tui Tui houseboaters Robbie Rudine & Janet Yoder "steal the scene" on their way to volunteer at Willow dock. |
Tour sponsors hung out their banners. Colorful balloons were attached to A-boards marking the tour homes. Tricia Rendina had the Houseboatique all decked out and also handled the raffle of a two hour electric boat rental and dinner for two at Duke's restaurant. $294 worth of $1 tickets were sold by Tricia's grandson, Jacob, and Gina Granat who sported a "paper boa" of purple raffle tickets.
Thanks to this year's tour director, Cathi Major and her committee - mostly new to tour planning -- for all their hard work. Veterans, Marty Greer and Jann McFarland, were on hand to help the committee sail through the mostly uncharted waters of planning due to lack of a paper trail and this years' committee has vowed to leave lots of notes for the tour 2012 committee. (Does that mean you all aren't coming back for the next one?) Marty and Jann also wrote the house descriptions for the tour brochure and procured most of the houses. Media and public relations were handled by Laura Lowery. Courtney Cooper was head of houseboat community communications and then jumped back in with both feet to be volunteer coordinator. Amy Ellingson and Sylvia Hubbert were in charge of getting tour sponsors to underwrite a lot of the tour expenses and did a great job, Jo Seel and Ingrid Rausch did logistics - all those important details like portapotties! Bill Keasler did the brochure layout, and Bill Wilcox helped with general planning and distribution of posters & postcards. Past tour chair Melissa Ahlers was present on tour day to oversee things on the east side of the lake.
More thanks to the volunteers who showed up on the days before the tour to help address and stuff ticket envelopes and set up "will call" for tour day - Marilyn Robertson, Marty Greer, Margaret Allen, and Rick Weller. Also, to Steve Hansen for helping with "tech support" when Brown Paper Tickets let all their people go home over Labor Day weekend. And still more thanks to all those who showed up on tour day to help. We couldn't have done it without you!
Please see separate list of tour 2010 sponsors - they make it possible for us to be able to make this a first class event. Thank you one and all.