Thank you, Libby, for supporting the chainsaw extravaganza

To the editor:

The Venture Inn and Country Inn want to thank our community for your great attendance and support of our fifth annual International chainsaw event. We had a wonderful year in every event category. Our chainsaw event hosted chainsaw carvers who are unrivaled anywhere in the world, and their work was clearly spectacular. My view of the auctions just before they were happening was overwhelming and better than I dreamed they could be. Thanks to our local sponsors, our crews and our volunteer worker bees, the whole event went off like a beautiful fireworks display, right off the bat. Special thanks are due to Steve Backus who has been with us every year and his brother, Boaz, who is certainly one of the best auctioneers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Our history is quite interesting. In our first year’s carving event we had 96 bidders. Since then, the number of bidders and the number of bids has gone up steadily each year. The

number of registered bidders this year was 261 and they were the most enthusiastic bidders we have ever had. Our follow up comments have been wonderful, vocally from guests at the Venture Inn and Country Inn. Most surprising was the support and comments from thousands of chainsaw carving enthusiasts from all over the world on Facebook.

We have clearly climbed a mountain and barring an unforeseen catastrophe we now know that we can make it happen for years to come, giving a big push to our area’s economy and helping us recover from our loss of logging and mining. Because of our success with this year’s contest, we are giving the Country Inn a facelift, which will help us continue expanding with future carving competitions and other local events.

We would be incredibly happy to hear any comments you might have, as we are open-minded about continuing to add to our community’s growth and development.

Again, a big thank you!

Paul Bunn

Libby