On the road The Kilt & Thistle

Well it’s Highland Games Season again. Well actually it has been for some time and depending on where you live , it is always Games Season somewhere. The was a time we started the year in January with a booth at the local Burns Celebration and then a small local Festival in April, before Tartan Day was proclaimed officially a real day. These days we do a small Tartan Day event in Washington 

http://www.tartanday-wa.org/ a nice event that has real potential. I hope you folks in Washington can get behind this one. Next this year for us was the Sacramento Highland Games in Woodland California. It seems like all the big events are not in the town they stated in for one reason or another. The Sacramento event really kicked ass on many levels. I only wish the Portland Highland Games , the closest event to our Oregon retail store, was this caliber of this event. Obligatory sip of Dalmore Cigar Malt and back to the post. As a side note, I thought I would by a blended whiskey for the summer Bar-B-Que season for whiskey and coke. Bought a half gallon of Grant’s. What a waste of money. I had no idea what a Single Malt Snob I had turned into. Now on to the rest of the post.
We then turned our sites to the local event in Eugene Scottish Festival, another newer small event with plenty of potential. However read my post Oregon Vs. Washington to get the flavor of these two small events and the vast differences. In the Northwest the Bellingham Highland Games , the first weekend in June really kicks things off up here. We have started limiting our events based on ROI , translated , return on investment. Two years ago we were doing twelve events a year this year we have cut that to less than half. For all these events and more see our events schedule posted at http://www.kilts.com/events.htm . Our next event is the Skagit Valley Highland Games in Mount Vernon Washington. We were personally invited to this event thirteen years ago when they were just getting started. It has grown to an attendance of over twenty-five thousand for the two day event. The folks that put this on, Skye Richendrfer in particular, have made this one of the must see events on the West Coast. You can get more info at http://www.celticarts.org/ the second weekend in July. Next in line for us is the Seattle Highland Games now names the Pacific Northwest Highland Games http://www.sshga.org/ and naturally it’s not in Seattle, it’s in the cute little town of Enumclaw. at the Expo Center. This is the largest event in the Northwest for an approximate thirty-five thousand in attendance for the two days. We were on a waiting list to get into this one, and I see why. If you live in the Northwest, try to make this event and be prepared to stay two days , because there is simply that much to see and do. August has several small events in Oregon with the best one being the Douglas County Highland Games http://www.dcscots.org/ . We no longer are a Vendor at this event, but I highly recommend it as one of the better small events when it comes to the variety of music during the two days. So we are in the store for August and then, for the first time, off to Pleasanton, California. By far the largest Highland Games on the West Coast. Last years attendance was sixty-five thousand and for our first year there we will probably not be fully prepared for what happens. I will certainly have a full report when it’s all over. We hope those of you that we have come to know by phone and email will stop by the booth to say hello. That buttons up our year and we settle back in to our retail store for the winter.