March 2006.  Chandler, AZ  One of our worst, most disastrous weekends ever.  We went a long ways for this one and this turned out to be one of the most stressful weekends we ever had to endure. 145 days of drought in the Phoenix area ended with 1 1/2 days of torrential downpours that turned the vendor area into a foot-deep lake and the parking lot into a mud bog where it was virtually impossible for vendors to get their vehicles out until the mud dried. 

It started raining on Friday evening.  Throughout the night, we listened to the rain coming down on top of our motor home.  Periodically, the rain would slow down, but would come down hard shortly after.  Earlier on Friday, there were reports of possible rain.  As I walked around the vendor area, located in a gully, I realized that if we were to get a large amount of rain, the area is going to flood.  The ground was hard and it would take a long time for the water to seep through.  Fortunately, when we closed up Friday evening, we removed most of our things from the ground.

Please read what I have written on our DandL CREATIONS website about the Chandler Ostrich Festival called 'Take the Money and Run'  a true accounting of how the vendors were ripped off     .http://www.dandlcreations.com/chandler.htm

Upon awakening Saturday morning, it was still raining and we pretty much knew that the day was going to be a 'washout'.  All day long the rains kept coming and coming.  As we sat in the motor home in the parking lot we saw it turning to mud, as some vehicles passed by.  We began to wonder if we would be able to get our vehicle out of the parking lot as we saw many vehicles actually get stuck in the mud; tow trucks couldn't even get them out.  Night-time came and it was still raining.  It kept up until early Sunday morning.  We finally went to our booth around 8:00AM and found the top sagging with water and a huge lake surrounding the booths located in the gully,  What a bonehead idea to put vendors down in here.

We waited for several hours before they began pumping out the water.  The promoters claimed that since it was Sunday, they could not contact the workers.  As the time approached 2:00, the water was just about gone and we were able to open up.  We still had major problems with the parking lot because we weren't sure if we'd be able to get out of there.  However, just after it became dark, I figured that the mud had dried enough to enable me to escape.