Last Saturday dawned with overcast skies, muggy temperatures, but without the heat that has been plaguing the Upstate recently. Luckily it seemed the rain that was forecast was going to hold out on us. We were greeted into the Zoo by the "howling monkeys" and set up our booth right across from their cage. We were sure they were amused by this new entertainment.
After setting up, we had a brief half hour to eat some breakfast, change outfits, rehearse what we were going to say, and wait patiently for our backup crew to arrive. At 10 the gates opened and at first we were discouraged that no one was filing through and then one family trickled through. They gave us the heads up, they had skipped the first booths, it was crazy, lines backed up for 30 minutes, brace yourselves! And soon after we were slammed with people!
It was amazing the amount of people that came through! Most were there for the zoo or the free ice cream or both, and some stayed and expressed interest in our barn which was awesome. My sis and I fell into the routine of bringing people in and getting people to talk to us. It was a lot of fun. Soon our reserves arrived! Emi, her boyfriend, and Sydney decked out in tie-dyes from camp and ready for anything. We handed them a stack of brochures and set them off to enjoy the zoo, bombard people with brochures, and in general let people know about us. Our second reserve team, Sabine and Becca, arrived a bit later and proceeded to make a sign for us and help supply us with food and extra hands. Ah, the awesomeness of the barn family at work!
By 11:45 over 4,000 people had shown up for the event, and the sticker/report card/free ice cream fell through. So we lured people in with our awesome pony stickers and just being awesome in general. It thankfully came to a steady, but not crazy, stream of people by lunch time and we were really able to get to know some of our guests.
By 3 things tapered to a close as admission was being charged again, so we broke camp early and started heading back to the truck. (This time with a hand cart and not our huge truck!) Just as we started heading back home the clouds opened up and the rain started to pour! Just in time.
All in all, the zoo was a blast and hopefully we'll see some new riders come of it. And if you entered the raffle, Leslie should be letting the winners know sometime this week!
~Gwen
