On Saturday morning the rain was down to a light drizzle when I broke camp hurriedly folding all the wet stuff up together and throwing it in the back of my Subaru. Thank goodness for the heavy duty rubber liner in the back! I headed down to Del Mar where the Tiny House Fest was being held, stopping first at a Harry Potter themed coffee shop called Platform 909, then driving on toll roads, which round through beautifully green mountains out to the coast. I started listening to Michelle Obama‘s new book, Overcoming, read by the author. I just love listening to her voice, I’m excited to delve further into the book on my drive home.
I found the Tiny Fest to be a mixed bag. I enjoyed looking at the different tiny home models that were available and checking out the different things people had done in their van and Skooly conversions, but there weren’t any individual people’s tiny homes there, which I guess makes sense since this was just a two day festival and often times people with tiny homes have them in a semi permanent location. If someone wants to be ultra mobile they tend to have a coveted van or Skooly. They were also a variety of presentations scheduled over the two days of the Tiny Fest. I attended two of them – I gained some good insight from one of them, though the presenter spent a lot of time pushing her tiny house community and encouraging people to join which I felt was too much of a hard sell, and the other presentation, on sustainability in tiny homes, was disappointing. It was obvious the presenter hadn’t really prepared much, he only spoke for about 10 minutes about the sustainability features of his tiny home then spent the next 20 minutes talking about potentially sustainable creations that he was working on, none of which he’s put into action. He showed us one of his creations that ended up being a failed science experiment -it created such a loud boom it hurt everyone’s ears! I still feel it was worth my time to spend the day there as I did get some great ideas and know I need to do more research, especially on the issue of finding land for a tiny home.
I decided that one day was all I needed and headed to the hotel, grateful I wasn’t going to have to put up a wet tent. Once I got settled in, I went for a swim in the pool and relax in the Jacuzzi before having some dinner and watching the film Women Talking. I was so impressed with Sarah Polley’s interpretation of this incredible book. It was a very intense movie, it felt so real and the cinematography was so impressive. I thought her use of flashbacks was very effective. It’s one of those few movies that I would like to see again as I feel like there was so much happening just in peoples facial expressions. There was a lot to take in and I’m sure I missed much while absorbing the emotional impact of the film.
I ended the evening with a lovely video chat with my daughter Annemarie in New Zealand. It sounds like there’s lots of fun events and activities going on as the summer starts to wind down there. Now I want to go back!