Adventures in Ancient Egypt

The BrassGears Adventurers Society visits King Tutankhamun's
Tomb! Mystery! Golden Treasures! A Pharoah's Curse!

Many of our friends enjoy the Steampunk costuming scene, and formed a little club in which to plan events that give them more opportunities to dress in costume than just the science fiction conventions. We like to join in when schedules permit. This summer, my very good friend Susan planned the BAS outing to our local museum, which had a traveling exhibit for King Tut's treasures. Quite the appropriate event for costumers of the Steampunk persuasion!

We started out meeting in the museum's foyer, where we got a short introduction to the exhibit and other interesting tidbits about the museum's history of ancient Egyptian artifacts. Then we moved on to the beginning of the exhibit, where we got audio tour wands that played the audio portion of the exhibit tour, but only to each individual person. This was my first experience with such a device, and I liked it. The initial portion of the tour introduced us to the history of archeology in Egypt, the Valley of the Kings and Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.

no photo could do justice

After the initial portion of the tour, we were sent into the main portion of the tour. It was set up to give us a similar experience to what Carter and Carnarvon experienced as they opened each section of Tut's tomb. It was extremely well done, with each reproduction piece in the "tomb" rooms painstakingly made and placed exactly how they were in the real tomb. It was awe inspiring and took my breath away. My only issue was that the tour was timed, while I wanted to linger over each "room" and inspect it carefully. But I asked the museum lady if I could go back and see the rooms and of course I could.

We also went through rooms of reproductions of the treasures that were found in Tut's tomb. You might ask, why bother going to see reproductions if they aren't the real thing?  Firstly, any traveling exhibit of the real treasures is usually limited to a small selection of pieces, and THIS exhibit was literally overflowing with beautiful and accurate reproductions... I've SEEN the traveling exhibit that had some of the real treasures, and there just weren't that many. This exhibit left me feeling very satisfied! Secondly... the sheer value of all those real pieces, they are priceless and what if a terrible accident happened.  Thirdly, these were extremely accurate reproductions, to the point that all that gold you see? it's real gold. They did not skimp.

Here's a selection of photos of the exhibit!

This crown!

All the details there, "just" a reproduction.

Hail, Sekhmet!

My son and I have this game and play it often! :)

I took so many more pictures! I cannot possibly fit them all here. But here's one last picture in the room with Tut's primary mask... all of us BAS members and our museum tour guide. :)

After we'd finished touring the Tut exhibit, the museum's Egypt exhibit and all the other parts of the museum that we wanted to see, we were invited to the atrium overlooking the hill the museum is on and further away, the river. There we enjoyed a lovely luncheon that the museum itself provided, designed to go with the Egypt theme with lamb meatballs, the best rice I've ever had, some vegetables that were sweetened with honey as well as the usual hummus, pita and crackers. After lunch, we went into the museum's theater and watched the accompanying 3D movie that went with the exhibit. Well done!

These parasols!

Because most of the BAS members were from out of town, a whole day of adventure had been planned, so after the museum we went to Vanderveer Park, a park that had been designed and built during the period in which Steampunk is set. The day was amazingly lovely, and we saw 3 separate wedding parties in the park taking photos (and we ended up taking pictures with one of them).  We strolled the promenade took our own photos for the fun of it.

After our stroll in the park, we retired to Credit Island Park, a place with a lot of history in the time period. There we partook of tea and refreshment (and a little wine). We also did a little strolling about the park, where we found an art installment of statues set in the turn of the century, some historical plaques about the park, and a tank.

To finish off the day, the BAS members remaining spent the evening at Susan's home where we tried to watch the original "The Mummy" film in  her backyard, but technical difficulties drove everyone into the house (I'd gone home before then). It was a superb day!

Pagan Spirit Gathering 2016

Pagan Spirit Gathering 2016 fell on June 19-26 this year, and was held at Tall Tree Lake Campground in southern Illinois.

If you've followed my first two years going to PSG you'll know that those two years were not the best for me! So I had a lot of hope that THIS year would be injury free! And it was.

Last year we lost our big tent in all the PSG flooding, it was over 10 years old anyway so I wasn't too surprised. Since the location of PSG had moved to a site nearly 6 hours away, I knew that I probably shouldn't drive one of our vehicles there, old and decrepit as they are. If I had to rent a vehicle anyway, might as well rent one that we could sleep in and save myself buying a replacement tent. I rented a U-haul cargo van and I took our cots and other camping gear. I'd never tried this before but after setting up our encampment, I was very happy with the result. We were as comfortable as we could be. Though I think I'd like to try an air mattress instead of cots next time I do the van idea.

I liked the camp site when I first saw it driving in. It seemed large enough to handle PSG at first glance. The only problem I saw was that the merchants along the road was a long walk and some might not visit all the merchants because of it. But the walk to the shower trailer was even longer... a full mile! I only walked to the shower trailer once, and rode the shuttle cart back. After that, I developed my own shower situation at our encampment and actually liked it better.

My favorite things about PSG 2016:

• I did a craft workshop for the tween center, a memory book which I had the blank book prepared and the kids glued decorative papers on the covers and pages, as well as prepared pagan stickers that I'd made for them. It went very well!
• The MUSIC.  I had parked our encampment right by the stage, and though it meant a few bedtimes were loud, for the most part our spot was perfect, as we got to hear all the concerts up close and personal, without even having to leave our camp if we didn't want to.
• Camping near my coven of course! they were all camped under the trees, which were right across the road from me. I couldn't park a van under the trees at this site.
• Pan's Ball was super fun. It was held at the stage, next door to my camp. Again, very convenient. I dressed up in my satyr horns and a skirt and had a great time dancing. I did not get drunk though! So no broken bones. lol
• Met some great new friends! 
• My favorite workshop was on ritual drama, and I was very impressed with it. I enjoyed all the workshops I went to.
• My coven was asked to do a ritual belly dance for the women's ritual. :)
• The raffle, run by my covenmates Melanie and Kim, was awesome. I brought home a couple awesome prizes.
• dragonfly friends, everywhere!

My least favorite things about PSG 2016

•  Not PSG's fault but damn, this year was HOT. I'm not at my best when I'm overheated, and my kid was unhappy in the heat too. He did his best the poor thing. It seriously got up to serious high heat index. Towards the end of the week we gave up and sat in the cab of the van while I ran it with the AC on for a while. It was the only way to survive.
  
• I eventually learned that the site had some drawbacks, including: unexpected holes that people's feet fell in, including a covenmate who hurt her leg in one. The site was infested with ticks. I personally saw 3 types and removed 2 from us. Somehow we seem to have escaped tick issues. There were leeches in the lake, and my kid stopped going to the lake when he found out. I didn't mind that as he came back from the lake filthy. But he did cool off there. There was a LOT of poison ivy. Nearly everyone camped under trees suffered from it. We were lucky and escaped that too.  Again, not PSG's fault but there are things that can be done to help some of this stuff... like regular mowing and filling the holes in.
• I thought the site was not the best for older and disabled folks. There was very little electric service so space was limited for those that needed it for medical reasons. Just some rough circumstances for a lot of people. 
• I thought the shower trailer being a mile plus away from many of the campers was an issue. We did have a pretty good shuttle system going which helped but sometimes it was hard to get a seat on it since everyone needed on it. I'm hoping the campsite owner is able to put some electric and water service in more places in the campground before next year, if PSG will be there again.

I don't think I'll be going back to PSG next year. I want to try something new next year, and have signed up for another event. So at this point I'd have to have a major financial windfall to afford to go to PSG as well as that other event. Who knows? :)