“Whatta crowd! Whatta crowd!” (Okay, I’m a Rodney Dangerfield fan.) There must be at least a few dozen of people here who had nothing better to do than watch people in weird costumes power-saw logs. I can’t see a reason why Mark and Cliff cannot spot Cherry and Rusty, unless they decided to take the van back into town and do something actually fun.

And yeah, I also noticed Cliff’s suddenly-enlarged 10-gallon hat.

Well, we’re not seeing Cricket Bro; instead, it’s the reappearance of Tad Crass. For those of you who are relatively new to the strip or the blog, or who simply have poor memories, Tad Crass was the con artist who wrote a fake camper’s survival book that current Trail rival Connor purchased and tried to follow, resulting in him having a nervous breakdown in Lost Forest (“Rusty and the alien invasion”). Crass later showed up in person as owner of a company that tried to hide a data center in its back lot (“Horsin’ Around”). This is the new world Mark tends find himself in: con artists, fraudsters, and corrupt politicians. But no poachers, no arsonists, and no kidnappers.

Still, Mark’s question has legs. Just what is Crass doing here, unless he is the event’s sponsor. And what’s his game?