Oysterfest 2015—it was HUGE!
On Sunday, October 4, I drove to Oysterfest 2015, held at Sanderson Field, Shelton, Washington. The annual event is both a seafood festival and a venue in which many community non-profit organizations can raise supporting funds. I belong to the Sanderson Field R.C. Flyers(SFRCF) and the local float club, Lake Nahwatzel R.C. Float Club(LNRCFC). The clubs exhibited a collection of R/C aircraft and also provided instructors for those interested in trying out a flight simulator. In addition, the clubs sold "crabwiches" at a nearby booth. Each year, SFRCF grants scholarships to graduating high school students interested in pursuing a career in aviation.
I arrived about 9:30 a.m. and was immediately impressed by both the number of working volunteers and the huge number of attractions. At first, there were not many customers walking around the event—but the vendors were ready for business. I soon began to see sign-carrying participants advertising their specialties.
In the beer garden, I watched as the stage was being readied for the first band of the day. I also took a survey of all of the micro-brews available—while others were already sampling them.
It was a beautiful, sunny day and the crowd rapidly increased. Long lines began to form for the great food offerings.
Passing by the Safety/First Aid tent, and as I walked back towards the flight-simulator tent, I stopped for awhile to watch Professor Bamboozle(Brian Wood) as he performed.
In another tent, I watched as Doug Hennex and his crew from Seattle Sound Systems performed their sound checks for the Pine Top Pickers. Later, as the audience gathered in the tent, the group began to play a set of great bluegrass tunes.
In the wine garden, the wine tasting was in full swing. The large number of local vintners offering their wines was surprising. The wine tasters were certainly enjoying the wines and especially appreciated being able to talk directly to those who made them.
I continued on my walk back to the R/C tent. I was attracted to the souvenir tent, especially to the light reflecting in the glassware. Customers were very interested in the clothing.
Outside again, I passed the kids' area. In my younger days, I am sure I would have wanted to take a train ride or pop a balloon, too.
It was busy in the flight-simulator tent when I arrived. Young pilots and their instructors were actively taking off, flying, and landing—and, yes, sometimes crashing—their aircraft. It was a pleasure to watch the kids as they focused on their flying. Both children and adults also enjoyed looking over the static R/C model display.
Next to the flight-simulator tent, the Shelton Scale Ship Modelers set up a large pool of water in which to demonstrate their scale-ship models. The ships, in and out of the water, attracted the attention of both children and adults—including this photographer.
Before I left Oysterfest for the day, I had a chance to watch the Oyster Shucking Championship. I had not watched this earlier in the day and was glad I finally did.
Throughout my time at Oysterfest, I photographed many of the volunteers who made the event run smoothly. Images in this gallery show the huge variety of services they performed. Not shown is the work done by the Port of Shelton employees in preparing the grounds for both auto and RV parking. My final impression of Oysterfest 2015—it was HUGE!
This gallery “tells the story” of Oysterfest 2015 and is best viewed on a PC or laptop. The default image size is 1000 pixels—although you can view scaled-down images on small monitors, phones, and tablets.
I hope you enjoy viewing these images as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Gallery
An Early Walk Around Oysterfest
In the Beer Garden
The Crowd Arrives
Professor Bamboozle
Pine Top Pickers
In the Wine Garden
Souvenirs
Trains and Balloons
R/C Flight Simulators
Shelton Scale Ship Modelers
Oyster Shucking Championship
Oysterfest Volunteers
Special Thanks
For the weeks of planning and the work throughout Oysterfest, including setup and teardown, special thanks to these SFRCF and LNRCFC club and family members, and their friends:
Wayne Moenoa, Jody Diaz, Bob Treinen, Sue Treinen, Burt Daggett, Mary Daggett, Rob Koenig, Mike Jones, Bob Beatty, Bill Judge, Bob Mason, Georgene Mason, Friends of the Mason's Paul and Linda, Dick Robb, Rob Danner, Jack Mitchell, Tom Strom Jr., Royce Tivel, Wayne Moenoa, Sharon Diaz, Kelli Smith, Dennis Marcus, John Tupper
Resources
About the Images
The images were taken with a Canon Rebel T3i. I used Canon EFS 60mm macro, and EFS 18-55mm lenses for the images. All images received simple processing in Photoshop and were saved as low-resolution JPEG images that were optimized for the Web.