I haven't been to a furry convention since covid started, and don't plan to any time soon. But as a thought experiment, I've decided to see how many furry cons I can go to in 2024 if going to furry cons was all I did.
I'm pulling this data from Furrycons.com, which doesn't actually have a lot of cons listed for next year, as most cons haven't announced them yet, so I'm using 2023 information, which is pretty complete but not full, so I might be missing a few.
I also want to do this on the cheap, and reasonably safely, so I've come up with the following rules:
3. Warmer weather ahead
Finally the weather starts to warm up, making car sleeping a little easier. That’s good because we’re going to have a lot of downtime between cons the next few months.
We start with yet another cross-country drive for Golden State FC (April 8, Los Angeles CA). We have to skip Furcationland (Portland ME) in favor of Las Vegas FC (April 13, Las Vegas NV). I just can't pass up the easy drive from one to the other. And Las Vegas is a great place to stay, because now we have a whopping MONTH to drive south to I-10 through Las Cruces (where we stayed back in February), San Antonio, Houston, and New Orleans, doing a little real vacationing before arriving at Furry Weekend Atlanta (May 13, Atlanta GA).
From Atlanta, we have the shortest drive on the trip, just 248 miles over two weeks to make it to NomadiCon (May 26, Nashville TN). Sadly we have to pass on AnthrOhio (Columbus OH), but Nashville has too much to offer. I’m going to enjoy the music scene here for a little while before heading into the mountains to find a place to hunker down for a few more weeks.
Cons Attended: 4 Miles Traveled: 4730
4. Far North, High Mountains
Moving into summer, the heat — like the government there — is going to become oppressive in the south. To take a break from both, we’re headed north! Snaking up the east coast to arrive at PortCon Maine (June 23, Portland Maine), we do get to stay the whole weekend, but we may not want to, because we have the chance to get to AnthroCon (June 29, Pittsburgh PA) early and crash with friends for nearly a whole week.
We can stay at AC until Monday, but after that we have to get up and go, driving over 2000 miles in four days to arrive at Fur-Eh! (July 7, Edmonton AB). At this point, we’ve left the south behind for nearly a month, maybe more depending on where we car camped, and we may have forgotten what it's like to live in a budding theocracy. Fortunately(?) we get a refresher as we travel to the Beehive State to attend Anthro Weekend Utah (July 15, Layton UT)
While the convention will be nice, a day’s drive across the border lands us in Denver, Colorado for the first time this year, where seemingly half the fandom has moved to, so we have options to settle down for a couple weeks off.
Cons Attended: 4 Miles Traveled: 5022
5. The Gauntlet
We’re freshly showered, well fed, and about to dive right into the gaping maw of the convention calendar. Eight weeks of nothing but cons, each over 1000 miles from the next one. We bite the bullet, leave the mountains, and head south into the sweltering Texas heat to hit up Texas Furry Siesta (August 4, Dallas TX). The heat here makes car camping extremely difficult, so we are going to buy a shirt and attend the panel on scalies and hit the road.
We find refuge from the heat at far off Wild Prairie FC (August 11, Winnipeg, MB), then head back to meet up with the friends we just left at DenFur (August 18, Denver CO). We have time for maybe one extra night or two after the con, but then it’s yet another four-day trek across the country to make it to Furrydelphia (August 25, Philadelphia PA) on time.
Now, we could have attended IndyFurCon (August 25, Indianapolis IN) instead. That would have cut our driving time in half, and in hindsight that probably would have been a good idea. But we’ve heard too many good things about Furrydelphia to leave it off our trip.
Cons Attended: 4 Miles Traveled: 5387