kevin_standlee | Preparing for the M3 Festival

Tomorrow is the climax of the 2025 Music, Murals and Margaritas Festival in Fernley. As in past years, the big event, including performances, food trucks, etc. takes place on Center Street, which is the east boundary of the East Lot adjacent to Fernley House. That meant that Lisa and I had work to do today.

The street running left-right here is First Street (the south side of our property, adjacent to our garage), which intersects Center Street in the distance, which will be blocked off tomorrow for the festival.

A large dumpster and some portable toilets were delivered today. Assuming all goes like it did last year, there will also be a stage for performances, and there will be food trucks and various vendors. The cottonwood tree here is on our property.

People can of course park along the street, but we don't want them parking on our property or cutting across it, for liability reasons. So we strung up yellow tape on posts along the south edge of the property on First Street (shown here) and the north edge along Front Street.

We also put up a couple of No Trespassing signs.

This obviously is not a fence. It's a warning barrier. It's mainly an anti-liability screen for us, because people who cross this lot cannot say they were not warned.

Lisa and I hefted pallets and Lisa wired them together along the north side of the property.

I certainly hope that people don't try to cut across the property, and if they do, I don't want them to do anything that gets them hurt, because of course they are likely to blame us.

I also parked the minivan (just out of shot to the right here) parallel to the street, physically blocking the remaining access along the north side of the property.

We're not trying to be killjoys, but we also don't want to be sued by someone tripping and falling while walking to or from a festival where there will be plenty of alcohol flowing. It's not obvious that this lot is not just abandoned "free" land, and if we didn't do this, I'm certain that tomorrow morning we'd wake up and find it covered with cars parking close in to the festival. Now they'll end up parking in the Union Pacific rail yard across the street, and I'll let UP figure out how to deal with that.

We'll be more or less trapped in the house all day tomorrow, or at least only be able to venture out on foot, but it's okay. We didn't have any plans to go anywhere anyway.