It always amazes me how good the music is at this festival. Even things I didn't think I liked. I started out spending a few minutes at the clawhammer workshop with Frank (Ken Perlman, Jody Stecher, et al) and stayed for the whole thing. Found myself at the traditional ballads workshop (Stecher & Brislin & Brian Peters) by mistake, thinking it was Carter Family type ballads, and found myself loving those old songs from a couple hundred years further back. I even dragged out my fiddle and took part in a fiddle jam with Alan Jabbour, Ken Perlman, Debby McClatchy, while Frank played bass. (Managed to get about every third note on songs I've never heard before). Annie & the Hedonists, Beppe Gambetta, Raisin Pickers, Finest Kind, the gospel sing with Jeff Warner, Peter & MaryAlice Amidon, Kim & Reggie Harris, Sandy & Caroline in a Margaret MacArthur tribute, and on and on. Good stuff.

And then there was the off-campus activity.

Apart from the initial fiasco where Kendall stole my campsite, things got better and better all weekend until Frank dragged me home. Well, he didn't actualy steal it... his site conveniently located near the Dutch Barn gate, had no working electrical outlet, and so the volunteers moved him a few sites down to #211 (yup, MY site) because he looked like a hotty who needed air-conditioning, or something.

Then, when we showed up a couple of hours later, we also pulled into #211, thinking "Great, we're right next to Kendall & Jacqui!" Unfortunately, the state of NY has rules about 10' between awnings, 30' per RV or whatever, and we couldn't all stay on that site. So we moved down to Kendall's original site, borrowed his electrical extension so we could reach the next guy's spare electrical outlet, and were happily and conveniently installed right next to the gate!

A few hours later when I told Kendall how much I liked his (former) site, he said "So I don't need to feel bad anymore?"

I assured him he could feel bad as long as he wanted.

Had a nice jam Saturday night with Don Meixner, among other folks. Frank suddenly turned into a jewelry junkie and bought himself a (granted, beautiful) silver brooch for his banjo strap, hand-made by Don. And then Don and his wife (Cindy?) came down after they closed up the booth and rewarded us with a few songs.

Vixen & Reynaud sat with us at the fiddle jam. Tim got at least 2 out of 3 notes in every tune (to my one) and we sat around eating pie at our site later that day.

Saw BBC and Dharmabum, waved back at Animaterra (she was in the thick of a great accordion/concertina jam), chatted with Sandy & Caroline, Dick & Susan (who laughingly said "What are YOU doing here?" when Frank and I, the die-hard bluegrassers, showed up at the traditional ballads workshop mentioned above), met the Midchucks (he and Ms) several times during the weekend as people kept re-introducing us, and generally had a grand time.

Back to cleaning out the camper and doing laundry...