Midnight Madness: The Cottager Invasion

The annual Haliburton Midnight Madness went down last night. It's apparently one of the really big events of the summer up here in Cottage Country. All the stores in Haliburton are supposed to slash their prices and offer really great deals on merchandise. The main street gets closed off and vendors sell things from there. It's a definite tourist type of thing and it gets heavily hyped around here. Most years I've never been able to see what all the hoopla is about because I've been working Friday night at Medeba. The two times that I have gone it has been later in the evening and all the commotion has died down. I never understood what the big deal was. According to others, I just came too late to see the really good stuff such as the live bands on the streets and the fun festivities. Well, this year I arrived to Haliburton at around 8:30pm. I'll go on record to say that I still don't get it. The place is packed and you will never see little Haliburton anymore bustling. It's a large sea of cottagers infesting the streets of this quaint town. There wasn't anything exciting happening other then lots of vendors making use of the closed off streets. There was no live bands. The only festivties that I saw was a bunch of elderly couples doing a folk dance (or some kind of dance). The most amusing part about the dance was the guy who was barking out over the loud speakers what move to do next. As for the deals, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. You could buy 4 bag of chips for 5 dollars but I was less motivated to do that due to the kid screaming at everyone to buy his chips. He sent some serious hate vibes and I feared they may have contiminated the chips. Needless to say, I found myself fairly bored after about 22 minutes and I was ready to go somewhere with less congestion of Cottage Folks.

I'd still say it was a good night. I got to spend some quality time with the marvelous Katy and fantastic Molly. Then we all made a stop at the Baine residence which is always a magnificent experience. It was a good time. I'm pretty sure I am ready to opt out of the madness for next year.