NOTE: to my SCA friends, this post is aimed at co-workers and others, so just skip to the pictures, it’s why you’re here anyway. And this will be two posts because it’s getting long.
If you don’t know what the SCA is, look here. There are also 3 posts from last year’s Pennsic 49.
Pennsic 50 has come and gone. Two weeks of “fun in the sun” with 11,800 other crazy folks dressed in medieval garb.
This was the 36th Pennsic for me, the first one being Pennsic 14 (1986). I’ve managed to make every intervening one for at least a few days. There were cancelled (very wisely) in 2020 and 2021. And I had no idea what to do with myself those weeks. I had never been home at the beginning of August in my adult life.
This year it ran from Saturday July 29th to Sunday August 13th. And is divided into 2 parts, the first week (“Peace Week”) is mostly setting up and hanging out with friends. The large organized activities kick off the middle weekend (Sunday usually) and the following week is “War Week” because that’s when all the large battles are held.
For the last couple of years, two weeks were seeming a bit too long. So we decided to skip the first few days and arrive on the first Thursday rather than Saturday. And, because Jess was (justifiably) nervous about leaving the house and dogs in the care of Joey, she went home on Wednesday driving Marcus’s car. Marcus and I broken down on the last Saturday and drove the truck and trailer home.
OK, with all that on the table, let’s look at the camp first. When I tell people that I camp for 2 weeks in August, they usually question my sanity. “Isn’t it hot in tents in August?” To which I ask, “When I say ‘tent’ are you imagining ones of those nylon dome numbers? Because that’s not what we use.” I have a 15′ x 18′ by 10′ tall canvas tent. Yes, it still gets a little warm by the mid-afternoon, but it’s quite livable.
Pennsic 50 Tent Front
Photo 1 is the “front” of the tent. It’s a square end marque style tent and there are two wall pieces that clip to hooks on the top. That allows us to arrange the openings wherever we want and make them wide if we want, as here. When it rains, we close up the front. In this setup, we have it divided into two parts, the front area is for hanging out. The remaining part hides all our stuff.
Pennsic 50 Tent Side
Photo 2 is the outside where I have set up a little awning so I can putter at some woodworking. This time I was making some stools. The table also has cooking stuff in the weather proof bins and a propane stove. We used to cook all our own meals, especially when we had both kids with us and my students. These days it’s just the two of us so we signed on to a meal plan at another camp. We keep a light setup in case we want to cook something ourselves and I also need to brew batches of iced tea. You’ll also note the Renology 100W solar panel. Not very medieval, but if Jess can’t keep her phone and iPad charged, there will be Trouble.
Pennsic 50 Tent Interior One
Pennsic 50 Tent Interior Two
Photos 3 & 4 are the bedroom area of the tent. The bed is a break down oak bed (double with a nice foam mattress), sporting a new headboard this year. My kit is often tests of techniques that I am learning for other projects. The headboard is an oak frame with floating panels, very medieval, and still common today. It’s also heavy as crap unfortunately. It will get better as the wood dries more, but the whole frame is at least 150 lbs not counting the mattress. Probably more. But, hey, I have a big trailer and a truck that hardly breaks a sweat dragging it around. Anyway, you can’t camp for 2 weeks and sleep on the ground. Or on an air mattress, which is the same as sleeping on the ground since that’s where you’ll be by morning.
Also you’ll see the closet for all our garb, it’s looking thin at the moment because the bags on the ground are stuffed with dirty clothes. Yeah, rugs on the floor. There’s no bottom to the tent, it’s a top and walls with a mud flap. So we put down a heavy tarp first, set the tent up on top of that and then roll out a couple of thrift store area rugs on that. It’s pretty nice. Sure, if it rains a lot we’ll get a little water in sometimes depending on the drainage around where the tent is sitting, but the sun is bright, that stuff dries out fast. And if it’s trashed, well, it’s a $20 thrift store rug and gets tossed in one of the handy dumpsters located around the campground.
And the business end of the solar setup is a Goal Zero Yeti 400 battery/solar charge controller. The sun is so bright, the panel tops up the battery in 4 or 5 hours typically. That means I don’t have to keep reorienting the panel to maximize the sun, just set it for mid day and leave it.
Pennsic 50 Merchant Area
Photo 5 is a shot of the merchant area. There are 200-300 or so merchants each year selling all kinds of vaguely medieval stuff or supplies. I am standing next to a booth that sells handmade custom boots in a variety of styles. These guys have taken plenty of our money over the years. I have 3 pair, Jess as one and Marcus has two, I think. Other places sell armor and other gear associated with the sport combat we do, various garb, fabric, jewelry, break down furniture, you name it. No cheap crap though, it all has to tie in to the theme.
Pennsic 50 Pack Out
The last photo in this set is of the camp as we’re starting to break down. My tent is at the far right. The pile of crap and canvas in the middle is the communal 20×30 tent getting folded and prepped for loading. Right, the communal stuff. There are over 11,000 people here, but they usually camp in groups based on their local chapter (in this case the Barony of Lochmere (Anne Arundel and Howard counties in MD)) or in a household group of folks that come together for some common reason. This year Lochmere had around 40 or 50 people, hard to be sure, only a dozen people were there start to finish. Some came late like we did, some had to leave early and quite a few only came for a few days in the middle. We set our tents up around a courtyard and you enter camp through the common tent that’s decorated with hand painted tapestries based on medieval ones and lit by candles, all very posh :). I would guess that 30-40 is the average camp size with some large outliers and there is space set aside for single camping, typically new folks that haven’t hooked up with a local group or household yet.
Next post: Court and Field.