It is 4 a.m on August 17^th, Julia Moore, Dakota Baker, and I managed to sleep through my alarm. I had been woken up by my dad talking and a dog barking. Julia and I had to get ready for Gencon, “The Best Four Days in Gaming”.

After roughly forty-five minutes of costume fixing, adding make-up and any additional packing, everyone was packed into the car and we drove to the nearest gas-station. Julia and I were in costume and just walked right on in. The employee who was working stated that it was “the weirdest thing –he- has seen while working morning shift”. After grabbing some snacks and paying for some gas, we left. At the time it was close to 5:30.

There wasn’t much going happening on the way there, we all mostly slept.

Around 7:30, we reached Indy and the Convention Center. We took a bit to find a moderately cheap parking garage, conventions mean spiked up parking prices especially at the garages next door to the building. After finding a parking garage, everyone piled out of the car and headed towards the building the main events were being held in.

There really was no line to get our badges because the booths for those didn’t actually open until 7:30 anyway. One of the rules we established for Gencon was to be there right when the badge stations opened or risked standing in line for an hour or two. Fortunately, we didn’t end up waiting around. We left the convention hall, with our badges, and headed towards the Steak and Shake that was a block down. Though that ended up being a later destination, we actually spent around an hour looking for a CVS. Ironically as early as we got to Indy, we were too early for the CVS to be open so we stood around for a good half hour waiting. Finally, after that trip to CVS, we made it to Steak and Shake.

During breakfast, a certain part of Gencon opened, the Vendor’s Hall. The Vendor’s hall is the part of Gencon where all the shopping is done. If I’m correct, this year was the first year that my group wasn’t in the convention hall when the vendor’s opened. After breakfast, we walked back and entered the Vendor’s hall.

The room we walked into was filled wall to wall with booths selling a variety of items. It was everything from board games to anime to books. This room was large enough it takes over an hour to walk through it even without looking at booths. Julia and I stayed together in here while the rest of the group scattered. We walked around, bought several things, and were stopped several times for photos. We saw people painting the miniatures figures used in games like Dungeons and Dragons, people controlling robots, and people bouncing off each other in these giant ball suits. There were quite a few people in costume besides Julia and me. I didn’t get photos of them because I was too nervous to ask permission. We spent several hours wandering around the building. After a good half hour of looking for everyone and meeting up we finally had to pack up and go.

Everyone got into the car with their goodies and we came back up here to Kendallville after some short stops.