Cue the Sanford and Son music....

Yes Virginia there really is a Land O'Lakes! It happens to be a very pretty little town and it is surrounded by a ton of (guess what?) lakes. A couple weekends ago there also happened to be about 50 something yard sales and I attended 30 something of them! Land O'Lakes is in the great state of Wisconsin and is around an hour from here. It was very pretty, a lot more pine trees than here. We have a lot of maples here but both places are heavily forested. Land O'Lakes actually reminded me a little of the Tahoe area forests. I went with Joy and Dick, Ruben and Lonnie, and Richard... who is Joy and Dick's son. David and Jerry were busy doing something silly like drywalling or plumbing. The rest of us all loaded up in Joy and Dick's van and crossed the border and did some serious yard sale shopping. Here is the crew on a cookie break in front of the Yard Sale Van.

We each found a few things and were all pleased with our purchases. Fishing poles, basketball hoops, fish scalers, casserole dishes, cutting boards, clothes... etc. I scored a fire king gravy boat, some fire king small bowls, a round footed fancy brand new Boos Block cutting board (regularly $40... I got it for $2), and a buffalo plaid fleecy type light jacket. So very lumberjack chic! A regular cornucopia of treasures! The trip was a kind of a cross between a treasure hunt and a scavenger hunt, leaning a bit on the scavenger side. Speaking of scavengers... Here is Richard in a hat that he regrettably decided would not fit in with this season's wardrobe.

Here are Lonnie and Ruben at one of the 30+ yard sales we hit scoping out the scene ready to battle it out with the other shoppers. We kept seeing the same people on the same loop as us... and folks started getting faster and faster walking down the driveways and then faster and faster walking around the tables. No one wanted to have another seasoned shopper beat them to the purchase. We even saw a group from Sidnaw! The reason that is so amazing is that there are like 100 people in Sidnaw and we were in another state.

I also love driving around checking out people's places. Forget the Pink Flamingos... sometimes the artwork people have in their yard just kinda makes you wonder. The people who owned the art piece below did not have a sale going on.. they just had this and of course a matching one flanking their driveway. Hmmm. Well they almost matched... the other instead of those swirley things had old electric insulators hanging off the sides of the umbrellas arms and then a large life size plastic swan instead of the loon on a stick you see here. Again... hmmm.

One of the other things I like about yard sales is that I love seeing the things people have laying around. I wonder where they got them, how long they have had them etc. My sisters and I used to kinda have this idea... we would imagine we had an Ugly Room. Now this room was just for fun and it had to be filled with stuff that was under $20, that was so ugly it took your breath away, and one of the keys was that it could not be something home/handmade. It had to be something that someone bought somewhere at a store. So we would chuckle to ourselves whenever we would see something and made sure to point it out to each other. One had to be careful not to announce to loudly that you found something for the Ugly Room though as one would not like to offend the owner. Ya had to be a bit discrete about it and it could be a rotating collection of course. I once saw a black velvet painting that had to be 5 feet in height and at least 3 feet wide. It was professionally done (not homemade) and it was (of course) of Elvis. Now what was different about THIS particular velvet Elvis painting was that Elvis had a long black braid in his hair in in the bottom near the frame was a teepee. I was truly impressed. I looked at it and thought... "what the hell?" Someone had that thing in their home... I would have LOVED to have watched the whole scene when it was first displayed in the original home. I bet the rest of the decor was equally interesting... I think they call it kitschy. The picture below is not the velvet Elvis painting I was talking about but DANG... it is close!

Anyway... the two toy sets below were at a yard sale in a storage unit. The man's father who just passed away had a huge collection of ... stuff. The deceased man was a WWII vet and some kind of engineer. The man was talking to another customer about his father and was trying to explain why he had some of the odd things he had. He should know that there is not really an explanation... some folks just like to collect stuff. I mean think of what YOU may have squirreled away in your garages, storage sheds, attics, etc. That stuff may make sense to you but someone coming along later may find you to be a rather curious duck.

Anyhoo, check it out! There was a real live and true erector set the worlds greatest toy! Right next to it was a chemistry set. You could build and destroy in one fell swoop! Underneath that chemistry set book there was even several bottles that still contained substances of one kind or another.

At another sale I was very surprised to find that old album cover of myself that I modeled for last week. You will have to pardon the hat, it was a bullfighter theme...

No.... thats not really me... but she is a hot mama... a real latin american favorite.

Then there is always the random stuff.... the blow up turkey hens are interesting.
Who knew those Tom Turkeys were so wild?

This last little print is titled "Rebekah the Helper"... ya that's me alright.

Halfway through we stopped at this restaurant in the middle of town...

It was very good and while I know they have black bears I wonder if they still have grizzly bears wandering around this area. I will have to look into that one. I would rather not find a grizzly in our wild raspberry patches. Frankly, a black bear would be rude enough.

After lunch we got back to our shopping... and this is what I had my eye on:

but alas it was not for sale and even if it was
I doubted it would be for a buck ninety two.

Ooooo. Dang sweet car, hay? You betcha.

The last sale we went to the lady was getting a bit desperate... as we were looking she started saying... that is free.. that is free.... however the artwork was not free. I did not happen to catch how much the paint by number angry little girl cost. I think the owner was done for the day. So were we. We stopped, got an ice cream and headed back to dah U.P.