#TBT Road Trip to Palm Spring 2017

November 14, 2019

The Month of October sure brought in some cold weather and had me reminiscing about our trip to Palm Springs in October of 2017. We decided to try doing a Vendor event outside of our state to see if it was worth doing. If it turned out we would consider doing more, if not we would just focus on our brick and mortar. So when we were invited to the Vintage Vibe Fest in Palm Springs we thought why not give it a try. That trip was such an adventure including some great times and along with disappointments. We certainly learned some lessons. We left Gillette at 5:30 in the morning and planned to make is to Las Vegas the first day. We drove two vehicles down, pulling two trailers full of inventory. Destination Vintage Vibe Festival, we had two spaces at the festival to fill. One would be a museum display and the other would be a retail space. We made it into Las Vegas after dark and due to the GPS, we drove the caravan right down the Las Vegas Strip! There may have been white knuckles. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel which had parking to accommodate our vehicles. We locked everything up and headed in for some dinner.

(Above: Sight seeing in Las Vegas)

The next day we did a little bit of sightseeing before we made our way toward Palm Springs where we would be unloading all our inventory and setting up for the Vintage Vibe Festival.

Vegas was fun, but very brief. We left Vegas and looked at how long it was going to take us. Not one of us had driven through this area before so it was all new to us. We looked at the route options and they were all about equal. We decided to take the scenic route.

(Above: Briana and I going through the Mohave dessert)

(Above: Joshua Tree In the Mohave dessert)

It took us much longer due to the terrain and the size of our loads, but it was a pretty area despite us almost running out of gas. Ha ha! To our relief we did make it! The temperature that day was 100 degrees, so it would have been a bit miserable to walk. We laugh about it now, but we were not really laughing at the time. I had just finished saying that when we did find a gas station the price was going to be crazy expensive. You know, due to it being in the middle of nowhere. We could officially say that we had seen the Mohave dessert. Finally, we rolled into Palm Springs two and a half hours later than we had intended, but we had officially made it. It was time to unload! There was a whole group of great people to help us unload.

(Above: This is the view from the Hotel in Palm Springs California)

(Above: The awesome Vintage Vibe team that met us at the door to unload the trailers)

(Above: The DeLorean from back to the future that met us at the entrance to the Vintage Vibe Festival)

We got everything unloaded and starting setting up and planned to finish the rest in the morning the next day. We went and got the most delicious coffee from this awesome little coffee shop in a very tucked away spot. Gre coffeehouse & Art Gallery. This is where we found the coffee that we use in our store. The next day we headed in to finish setting up and we were greeted by the DeLorean! I geek out on all things science fiction, and Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies as a kid. The Vintage Vibe team had put a lot of time and energy into this event, they had a great music bands lined up and there were a lot of fantastic vendors. We were excited to be here! As one always hopes for the event that they put so much effort in to be a success, sadly this event was not one of them. All of us really tried to make the best of it but really it was a very slow drip of people coming through the doors. However, we met some incredible people at this event that we are still in contact with today. We carry some of the products they carry in our store Liquid Luxxe now known as Modern Luxxe, and another just happened to open his own brick and mortar in Phoenix Arizona Hawk Salvage. Modern Luxxe and Slick Devil are a husband and wife team that make hair and body products. Hawk Salvage is a very eclectic variety of fun finds and antiques that are to unique not to share. I have linked some of the places I mentioned and these awesome businesses that I mentioned at the bottom of the page. If you are in the area you should definitely go see Hawk’s place, I know that I will be planning a trip to go see it in person. So even though the show did not go off with a bang we walked away feeling good about these amazing people we had met.

Briana and I branched off from Palm Springs after the show to have a little R&R. Thank goodness we planned accordingly, because we did have to load up almost all our inventory to bring it on the trek home. We learned some valuable lessons; the first is don’t forget to laugh even when you may be feeling a bit stressed. Two: find the positive things that happen in the negative moments. Three: always be kind and willing to help especially when emotions are high. And four: do not put your eggs in to many baskets, this is now why we don’t really do shows but we try to bring people to the amazing collection and to make some of the great finds we have available for those pickers that come to see us.

(My R&R location in Oceanside; the beach (below) and the California Surf Museum)

Vintage Vibe Festivals has moved around since this show, and they still continue to bring great Vendors and fantastic music. They learned an unfortunate lesson from the Palm Springs show that we attended, which was sad because they had a fantastic lineup. They have gone on to have very successful events. Check out their Facebook, I think you will agree that they really have a great theme going for their festivals.

Places we visited:

Gre Coffeehouse & Art Gallery
http://grecoffeehouse.com

Vintage Vibe Festival
https://www.facebook.com/VintageVibeFest/

Surf museum:
https://surfmuseum.org/

People we met and their businesses:

Modern Luxxe
http://liquidluxxe.com

Slick Devil
https://slickdevil.bigcartel.com/category/grooming

Hawk Salvage
Instagram: @hawksalvage

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