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Quilts....American style

Back at camp on Friday night we found we had two new neighbours a couple of (crazy) Canadian women, Caitlyn and Karen who were on a road trip sleeping in an amazing fashion in the back of their very large car.   Karen had a knee complaint and found it easiest to sleep in a chair and to make the holiday work they had put the chair in the back of the car leaving just enough room for Caitlyn to make a snug little bed on the floor behind her.  They had lots of cushions and I was a tad jealous.  They had been desperate for somewhere to sleep having had to resort to a graveyard car park the night before and the camp host asked if we minded if they shared our parking space.  Obviously, we didn’t mind and we ended up having a very pleasant evening learning about S’mores – toasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwich type things, lamenting the complete ban on campfires or we could have tried them and swopping travel tales and stories.   Caitlyn had been to Ireland and really liked it in spite of the lack of cream for her coffee!!   Its one of the things I really like about travel is meeting all the different people passing through and sharing stories


On the Saturday we went to the Eureka annual Quilt show.  It was excellent and there might have been 600 plus quilts on show.  Hung all over the walls of the historic village buildings and then up and down the entire length of the main street.  They were very varied but  typically American in style – a mixture of hand and machine quilted and some with applique and embroidery.  It was a riot of fabric and colour and very wonderful.  

The whole town had a festive air going on and there were a lot of fabric stalls and places to look at and buy patterns for every kind of quilt you could think of!! I was very tempted by some pre-cut squares in fab patterns but knew I was just being carried away by the moment and eventually resisted but I did buy a second hand book from the 1970s about the Mountain Artisans who were a cooperative who were very successful in making quilting fashionable at the time.  A good souvenir to have from a fabulous show.    

It was another very hot day so we came back to camp and I had a swim in the lake to cool down and remove some of the dust debris, Dr Fred hopped around the car giving it a wet swish to try and disguise the fact we had been off road… before chilling out and going to a bear talk held at the campsite.



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