Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Famous Video of Big Foot Turns 50: Videographer Gimlin to attend 2nd Annual Big Foot conference in the Tri-Cities
A still image from the Gimlin-Patterson Big Foot Film from 1967.
I was on my way to a Columbia Cares meeting at the Delany building last Wednesday when a white van with the logo "Road Yeti" got my attention.
The van turned right from 3rd St. onto Hwy. 12, and drove out of sight.
Seconds later the van appeared around the corner of Clay St., back onto 3rd St., and into the parking lot at Dayton Cut and Wrap.
I grabbed paper, pen, and my camera, and took off to see who was driving. When I got there nobody was in sight. There was a phone number on the van, which I decided to dial.
Montana Big Foot author Russell Acord answered the phone. When I told him where I was, he chuckled. It turns out Acord was in Florida, wrapping up a film production.
He said his ex-wife, Lori, is the owner of the van, and she agreed to let him advertise the International Big Foot Conference on the vehicle.
I told Acord about a Big Foot encounter that I heard about from Joyce Ta'Keal, a member of the Yakama Indian Nation, a number of years ago.
"I've heard people tell some pretty amazing true story events about Big Foot," he said.
Acord said in his initial research he found a "whole world of people out there" attending Big Foot conferences. "I wanted to do a conference of my own," he said.
"It seemed like a perfect fit," said Acord who has written a number of books about the creature.
Acord said the Second Annual International Big Foot Conference will be held at the Three Rivers Conference Center in Kennewick on Sept. 1, 2 and 3, and there will be around 60 vendors.
This year's special speaker will be Bob Gimlin, who along with Roger Patterson, in 1967, shot the film of Big Foot in a remote area of Northern California that is so familiar to people everywhere, Acord said.
The conference is dedicated to scientific data. A stage will be set up at the conference for top researchers to bring their latest discoveries to the podium.
To learn more about the International Big Foot Conference, go to InternationalBigFootConference.com. If you want to know about Joyce Ta'Keal's story, ask me.
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