This morning Allison and I went for a short walk up the hill to watch a Bluegrass festival tradition: staking claim to precious music viewing real estate. Festival seating is general admission, so if you want good seats, you have to be early. People camp out all night to get a good place in line. Walking through town this morning, the line snaked around the city streets and must have approached a mile in length.
This is not all you have to do to get good seats. Once the flood gates open at nine, you also must be fast. Even if you are number one in line, there is still a few hundred feet to cover before you reach the best seats. In these few hundred feet, you could be passed by many people, setting you a ways back from the stage and negating a hard nights work. Your claim is established simply with a tarp, which you must rig in advance to unroll in a seconds time.
So Allison and I woke up early. Not to get good seats, but just to watch the spectacle from above town. It was unreal. There is a five minute bagpipe ceremony before the gates are opened. Then some reveille is played. As the gates are opened, It looks more like people fleeing a tsunami wave then heading to see some bluegrass.
Allison snapped a time-lapse series of the venue filling up with tarps. It takes place over about one minute.
We actually went into the festival later for some music, but not till the afternoon. Around noon, a storm rolled in with intense thunder and lightning. Mushy hail stones the size of a gumball started to fall. I tried to make Allison pose outside for a picture.
The thick sheets of hail shortened visibility, almost like haze.
The storm soon passed, and we went into the show. We watched some music and got some snacks.
Unfortunately, we were just in time for the “kids parade.” Some kids walked around the venue and sang songs amidst some really scary festival monsters!
This one looked like a grumpy Flavor Flav. He also had the periodic table of elements stapled to his back.
I’m not quite sure what they were going for with this one. Maybe the guy from Predator?
The festival ends tonight. It’s been really fun, but we can’t wait for town to quiet down again.
-A+A
A’s…We made it back to Boston….Have a great summer and hopefully a quiet one now that the Blue grass festival has passed….K&J
dad and i are still marveling at that avalanche footage…we enjoy all the mountain vistas……..so used to our sealevel existence. we look forward to your postings. love mom and dad flips
Amazing; sounds like you two had the right idea; view from afar. xo, Aunt T (love the photo of Allison on the deck/porch)
That kids parade looks awful! It’s too bad that wasn’t during the hail storm.