Michigan Mud Jam, Part 2

As promised, a follow-up on the organization of Michigan Mud Jam. It started when some buddies made a mud bog on a farm belonging to one of them, and started inviting more and more people. The new friends invited their other friends and so on until several thousand people started showing up. The event was moved to Iosco County Fairgrounds and became a Trucks Gone Wild event. The fairgrounds cleared scrub trees and made a much larger area for playing in the mud and for thousands of campers jammed into tiny, inadequate camping spaces.

I don't know how many porta-johns were brought in, but there were banks of a dozen or so all over the campgrounds and in key play zones and specatator areas, and I believe they were all emptied twice a day all weekend. There were numerous large dumpsters near the entrance for trash, but trash was a big problem all weekend long and especeially on Sunday when everyone left. I think a lot of people didn't know/forgot the location of the dumpsters. It was an awkward location because there wasn't much room to pull off and dump your trash in the congested entrance/exit area and I think they would have been better served by providing dumpsters in several areas of the campgrounds and also trash cans in the play and spectator areas.

During the big truck shows it was immediately appearant that they needed more barriers between the trucks and the grandstands. Number one, the trucks were making approaches within ten feet of the inadequate barriers and for machinery of that size there's no reason why there can't be more distance. They are big enough to be seen from quite far away! The barriers themselves were just low blocks of concrete with heavy cable linking them together. People were sitting on the barriers and stepping over the cables, putting themselves even closer to the action. At one time I saw four Iosco County Reserve "deputies" standing around together but didn't see them doing anything to move people back beyond the barriers.

I was a little surprised that all the food trucks and vendors were all in an area that we never went close to all day. I would have expected them to be a little closer to the grandstand area. I was at the event from 8:30 am to 8:00pm and never even knew they were there!

But I read the Michigan Mud Jam web page and Facebook page after the event and it sounds like the organizers learned a lot from their inaugural event. Other than a guy getting his legs run over on Friday, I didn't hear of any other serious injuries. After all the bills are paid and everything shakes out I expect to hear they will be back next year.  One suggestion I have is they should raise their entry fees--at an average price of $20/day per person including camping it's much,much cheaper than any other entertainment available of ANY kind!