I have been spoiled.

For a number of years, we have lived in reasonable Sunday-morning driving distance from what I believe to be the Best Breakfast In Town: The Blue Moon Diner over on TV Highway. They serve, in my estimation, the best Eggs Benedict it has been my pleasure to regularly enjoy.

My introduction to Eggs Benny came in Las Vegas in the mid-90’s, when the boss decided to take us all out for breakfast one day at the Rio, a trendy casino well-known for their restaurants. I had been wanting to try it for years, but it’s one of those things that I wasn’t sure enough to spend money on, and ‘Benny ain’t the cheapest of breakfasts. When the Boss is footing the bill, however, is a perfect time to get adventurous. I was immediately hooked.

They just sent me a satisfaction survey, so they asked for it…

Oregon has two small towns that became famous due to the movies that were filmed in them. While Astoria was home to 1985’s The Goonies, over in St. Helens Disney filmed a spooky-themed movie series starting in 1998 with Halloweentown.

Ever hopeful to turn this sort of thing into a recurring tourist event, the town of St. Helens decided to host an annual Halloween-themed street fair every fall with events, vendors, and even a museum tour to commemorate the Disney movies and the later addition of a few scenes from Twilight (Bella’s house). My lovely wife Tolerant has been wanting to go for years and we were both due for some outdoor adventure, so I grabbed us tickets for this year’s event.

The weather broke fair and not-to-warm that weekend, which was about the only saving grace of the entire experience. The drive from Portland was nice with sunshine and light traffic up Highway 30, but once we turned off onto the street heading towards the event parking things backed up quickly. After about 20 minutes of inching forward we discovered that there were basically three lanes of event-goers converging through a single intersection of two-lane roads with only a hanging traffic signal to control it. This lead to a number of people getting fed up with the wait caused by gridlock to actively engage in creating more gridlock.

Once we made it around that corner, we got to creep forward for another ten minutes to the driveway only to find a “Lot Full” sign. This, strangely enough was NOT deterring people from pulling in anyway, but I knew there was a second lot past this one, so we pressed (err, crept) onward. I get the feeling the sign was placed in error, though, as there were indeed some places available in the back half.

Anyway, on we went with, again, no actual traffic control, so it was more creeping. We finally arrived at the second gate to discover there was only a single payment checker, which was why the whole situation was backed up so far. Oh, and of course the payment rig glitched out as we pulled up, then the spare needed a fresh receipt roll… Finally, I was able to purchase parking at the park-way robbery rate of $30/vehicle.

Ok so that took an hour, but on to the event, right?

Wrong.

There were already about 100 people waiting for the shuttle bus at this point, and amazingly they were all lined up pretty straight – out in the sun, because they only thought to provide one shade pavilion. Through some judicious shuffling around, Tolerant and I managed to not get sunburned as we waited for another full HOUR for the shuttles to whittle down the line and get us transported over to the fair. The ‘shuttles’ turned out to be actual school buses, which worked terribly because the parents of small children were smart enough to bring strollers. Modern strollers don’t fit into anything smaller than the back of an SUV, so trying to cram them into a bus with aisles designed for 10-year-olds was oh so much fun.

So now 2 hours into this madness we FINALLY get off the bus and into the fair blocks – only to discover that apparently they have been doing fucking ROAD CONSTRUCTION in the area and couldn’t get it finished before the event started so the event is crammed into a smaller space, some parts of which have Jersey walls and open dirt to trip over.

I had been pretty good about not getting bent out of shape over things I had no control of, but this was starting to push my limits. Seeing the potential for mayhem in my eyes, Tolerant steered me over to a gyro stand and made sure I ate meat while she nabbed herself an ice cream. Best wife ever.

Once I got outside of that and regained some brainpower we wandered through the various vendor stands while seeing how things were going, and the answer was: packed like sardines. Everyone was shoulder-to-shoulder in the street, in the booths, and most importantly, in the blocks-long lines to get into the museum and haunted house. I had bought tickets to these at $40/person online thinking to save myself trouble at the event, but was definitely not up to standing in line for another hour+ for the privilege.

Thinking that maybe by some miracle things would settle down once the live performances at the little stage got rolling, Tolerant and I wandered the vendor booths looking for something, anything that might be worth getting, and only found more disappointment. The vendors weren’t selling anything that we couldn’t either get elsewhere cheaper, or it was crap that wasn’t worth buying in the first place. Yes, 3D printers make some cool stuff. No, I will not buy something that will merely sit on the shelf and collect dust for $20 when I know it cost you $0.45 to print.

After wandering the whole length almost twice, we both decided we were too tired and disappointed with everything to put up with it any longer, and besides, it would probably take yet another hour to get back to the car, so we made for the bus stop and settled in to wait. This actually wasn’t as bad as the inbound trip (shaded, and we managed to get on the second bus out), so all-in-all I think we made it back to the car in 30-40 minutes.

Y’know, I could have cut them some slack if this had been a one-off event, but apparently they not only do this every year, they do this sort of thing several times a year. For them to show this level of incompetence is just criminal, and they owe me time and money I will never get back. My advice? Don’t bother next year.