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This was the second time we’ve participated in the Choochokam Arts Festival in Langley, WA on Whidbey Island.  It’s a small, community festival that attracts tourists who are vacationing in the area or Seattle area residents who have weekend homes on the island.  The locals come out in support of this and they have great volunteer support.  Whidbey Island is very supportive of the arts, Langley is listed in John Villani’s “The 100 best Art Towns in America”.  The Island also has a large population of retired folks who are very supportive of the art shows in the area.   

Load in is a bit difficult, they stage it by area and it always takes longer than they allocate time for so the last sections end up loading in a lot later than expected.  If they were a little more strict about making artists move their vehicles before they set up, they could probably eliminate a lot of the issues.  This year they sent an email stating that check in time began at 3, they neglected to mention that they wouldn’t start load in until 5.  We had contacted the organizer, knowing we were most likely in the last section to load in, she confirmed that via email so we didn’t even show up until 7, were told we needed to wait a bit so we went back to our RV and ate dinner before even starting the process.  When we arrived at our booth location at 7:45  we were immediately assigned some helpers who got our truck unloaded and all our booth items placed in our spot very quickly. I don’t remember any helpers last year, so this was a nice surprise.  We took just over an hour to set up our booth and by 9:00 we were back at the RV relaxing for the evening.  Much easier for us than some of the artists who got there at 3 and couldn't load in until 7 or later.  There were a few frustrated people by that time.

It appears the weather forecasters mixed up the forecast for the weekend, Sunday was supposed to be the warmer, sunnier day with clouds on Saturday. Just the opposite occurred, Saturday started sunny and stayed that way all day, perfect weather with temps in the low 70’s, nice breeze for part of the day and blue skies all day.   It was great weather all weekend for an art show.

Sales were brisk for the first 2 hours, we were able to make our booth fee, ferry fees and all other expenses by noon. About 12:30 it seemed like everyone took a lunch break and it was slow for the next couple of hours.  Late afternoon brought some more sales and overall it was a decent day for sales.  The show ended at 6:30 so we were able to enjoy a cookout with some other artists back at the RV, telling stories and sharing a few laughs.

Sunday started very slow with very few shoppers until after lunch.  We had many more sales on Saturday, but smaller dollar items.  Sunday we sold a couple of medium priced items as well as a few people who bought multiple pieces so overall our sales were a little lower on Sunday, but with far fewer sales.  Overall, given the track record we were okay with the sales for the weekend, would have always liked more, of course.

Load out was much easier than load in, they did regulate it a bit, but did a great job to ensure that there weren’t any bottlenecks.  We were able to load out fairly quickly, get the trailer hooked up at the campground and were thankful the Sunday evening wait for the ferry was much shorter than the Friday afternoon wait had been.