Our First Oregon Country Fair

The Oregon Country Fair is one of our favorite events. We went to our first fair in the summer of 2000. Wanda especially enjoyed herself as there was a fantastic body painter in attendance (Kathleen) who painted a wonderfully creative art piece on her torso. Of course, when at the fair and painted, you have to be prepared to have your photo taken and to pose with all the other ladies there. There were quite a number of ladies, young and old who enjoyed getting painted, or painting themselves, for the fair and there were a fair number who just went topless without any paint at all. There were lots of revealing costumes as well on bothe men and women, as well as lots of elaborate costumes, masks, stilts and other accessories that added to the weird but wonderful flavor of the festival.

We were stopped a number of times for Wanda to pose with various people or to pose alone for the many GWCs (Guys with Cameras). Sarongs, string bikinis, wings, wands, flowers, and paint adorned most people though there were a very few folks who simply didn't get it and were complaining about the nudity and the throngs of other people. It was hard to understand what they thought they were getting into when they came to the fair.

The crowd was pretty bad though, and as the day wore on it become more and more difficult to traverse the fair grounds. Food and souvenirs were quite pricey as you can imagine, and dust was almost intolerable at times. Thankfully, there were misters on many of the main paths to keep down the dust and to cool the press of bodies below.

We enjoyed the fair and the people, but left early enough to avoid most of the exit traffic and to take advantage of the last few hours of light. Instead of taking the most direct route home, we decided to drive over to the coast and up and find an area to take more photos of the body painting while it still looked good as the paint wasn't going to last over night. Once we got to the coast, we headed north and eventually found a small, secluded beach where we were able to shoot a series of photos undisturbed except for the sound of crashing waves and screaming seagulls. The light was quite lovely, but we didn't stay very long because it was getting quite cool as evening progressed, and of course, Wanda wasn't dressed for a cool evening. You can see a some of those images below.