Caseville Shanty Days

dave and I have spent the better part of the 2007/2008 winter at the tip of Michigan’s thumb at my folk’s cottage. The plan was to work our little tails off and make as much money as possible to continue our travels through North America. Unfortunately, well maybe fortunately when you see how things worked out, work at the sugar beet factory never materialized after the beet harvest and other jobs proved hard to come by. dave worked for a month and a half with a tree service and can now say the sugar beet factory WAS NOT the worst job he has had in his life. But we did get lucky when it came to snow and with all our free time we took advantage of it even without snowshoes and cross country skis. The snow kept coming and coming all winter long. It was nice for playing in and the shoveling proved to be part of our exercise routine through most of the winter.

dave Shoveling Snow

While the snow was nice … the wind was not. We had gotten so used to hardly any wind in Fairbanks that when the Michigan winter winds began to blow we had a hard time adjusting. In fact recreation on the beach was just about out of the question for the better part of the winter. Good thing we had trails in a variety of forests nearby!

dave and Dogs at Beach During Blizzard

Lucky for us the nearby town of Caseville had just the thing to take away our winter blues, the Shanty Days Festival! I don’t know much about the Shanty Days Festival as this was our first time attending. Caseville holds a huge Cheeseburger in Caseville Festival in August which has been a big hit with the tourists. I think Shanty Days was their winter version. From a first time attendee’s perspective it was a good reason to get outside in the sunshine and have a few beers … well maybe more then a few!

Human bowling started off the festival activities. Unfortunately the sleds seemed to have a mind of their own and rarely made it to the “bowling pins.” Or as you can see in the following photo, the contestant fell off the sled before hitting the pins.

Human Bowling

A broomball tournament was going on throughout the entire weekend. When we arrived we found a guy we worked with at the sugar beet factory immersed in a game. Had we known before hand we could have probably joined his team. (That’s him in the white helmet towards the back.) Broomball is similar to hockey but is played on snow with a blown up rubber ball and with brooms duct taped to prevent the bristles from falling out.

Broomball

The main event at the festival was the outhouse races. I had been trying for weeks to get dave to help me build one but he said he would rather be a spectator instead. After watching it this year if we happen to be in the Caseville area next year I think I can convince him we should enter. The outhouses could be made of anything as long as they were mounted on skis and had a toilet seat and a roll of toilet paper inside. Two people pushed them down a straight, flat course. Nobody had to sit inside it like the Chatinika Outhouse Races in Alaska.

Outhouse Examples (The dual seat outhouse was made by a newlywed couple.)

Outhouse Race (I wish I knew how to add movies to this blog. The movies show the race much better.)

Just after the outhouse races was the event Chick on a Stick. It was pretty simple - two guys carried a girl clinging to a stick down the same course as the outhouse races. Well it seemed pretty simple. You have to remember this festival started around 11:00 in the morning and we were well into the afternoon. Beers had been flowing for the better part of the day, the sun was shining and the girls didn’t look like they were THAT heavy!! Needless to say there were crashes, chicks on sticks were dropped and everyone had a good time.

Chick on a Stick

The last event of the day was the Polar Bear Dip. dave and I had planned to enter the event but when we saw how many others had the same idea we backed out. A local hot tub company set up a hot tub for the contestants to go into after they got out of the freezing water. Unfortunately there were so many people jumping in I don’t think a lot of people were able to get into the tub after their dip. Keep in mind what I mentioned before about the Michigan winter wind. Now imagine jumping into ice cold water and after getting out having to deal with winter wind freezing you to the core and no room in the hot tub.

Polar Bear Dip

The events continued into the local bars and nightclub but we opted out and headed home content in knowing we had just officially been to our first Caseville Shanty Days Festival.