Sittin by the Edge of the Bay

It is very, very pleasant here in O.B.Fuller County Park on the edge of the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. The breeze is onshore and, except for a picnic table, a fringe of shoreline pines, and a Trumpeter Swan with five little ones, there is nothing between us and Door County, Wisconsin  where radio tower lights twinkle with the stars. 
Up the other way I can imagine I see the lights on the Mackinac Bridge  which we crossed in the early afternoon. 
We prefer to forget the 450 plus miles of featureless freeway we drove to get here –Too Fast and TOO LONG!
We passed everything that makes this Michigan –- the coastal towns, the rivers with magic names—Au Sable, Pere Marquette, Manistee.  Towns like Grayling, Petoskey, Alpena  and Ludington were just exit signs.
  When we were in grad school at MSU (and starving), we watched Mort Neff’s Michigan Outdoors program every Thursday night. (Everybody watched; that’s why every Michigan citizen can tell you the best rivers to canoe, even if they never have). We had so little money that we seldom got out of the county;Only by the grace of my college roommate did I see any of richness of Michigan.  So be it resolved that we will do no more 400 mile days and we will find time to give Michigan its due.
Tomorrow we will forget these sins we have just repented and drive another 250 across the Upper Peninsula to meet our friends and settle into their cozy lakeside cottage  for days which promise to be warmed with friendship and just active enough to make new memories. 

We had a BERRY Nice time.

    We are in South Haven Michigan, heart of the Fruit Belt --  Blueberries, Raspberries, big luscious Blackberries, and PIES.  Yes, we have put away our share and then some, while enjoying a visit with our St Louis family.  Pat’s sister and the whole clan –- three young couples and two active (and now mobile) grand nieces are vacationing in a lovely rental home overlooking Lake Michigan .  Of course, the little girls were the center of everything –- beach time, walks around town, berry picking and just hanging around entertaining the grown-ups.
South Haven is beautiful with lovely well-kept homes, parks, the active harbor and just enough shops and restaurants to provide those little pleasures to the visitors.  There was none of the hurly burly we sometimes find in tourist destinations, just family fun under blue skies.
We had towed 400 miles from the Bash (and the 100 degree temperatures) into a balmy breezy 80 degrees with cool sleeping in a little family campground just West of town.

Birthday Bash 3

Where to begin? 
This group of thirty odd trailers -- Airstreams and a few SOB’s (Some Other Brand) –- gathered again at Coopers Lake near Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania to celebrate Wally Byam’s birthday. The inventor of the Airstream and promoter of the traditions of adventure with good fellowship would have been proud to be at this gathering.

 





















This is an eclectic group in every sense.  We were as Young as one year old and  there were many much more “experienced”. We had new owners and folks who had disassembled more than thirty trailers themselves (most of which are again moving)…
….working people and retired, fantastic cooks and a few pot washers, kids, dogs, cats, parrots and one very popular guy with a wading pool. 





Yes it was HOT, but our heroic organizers had moved us into new digs with electric and water hookups. 

We passed  the days chatting and visiting, eating huge breakfasts and planning for the evening pot luck dinners.  Mother Nature provided a glorious fireworks show on the Fourth and followed it with a second drenching, but spirits were high.
We tye died most of the tee shirts in sight, launched rockets and created a much appreciated water slide.





One onlooker called the team of dent pullers a “Swat Team” as they descended on and neutralized every crease and dent in the field.  Thanks guys! 









There was a highly professional hand squeezed lemonade stand –- well, it tasted professionally made…

 
It is hard to thank everyone who made this event so memorable; I’m afraid that we stole away in the early morning mist without expressing to each how much we value the friendship we enjoyed and unceasing good spirits that enveloped us all. Thanks.  See y’all next year!

PENN WOOD AIRSTREAM PARK

 

Imagine an oval green field, surrounded by tall Hemlocks and bounded on one side by a trout stream.  Imagine it fringed with Airstreams, some polished to a mirror finish, others flying flags.  Handsome, well-behaved dogs of every description, an abundance of camp chairs and a few Parrots… PARROTS?  Oh yes,  parrots, some with more Airstream time than we have.  This is the Penn Wood Airstream Paradise Park, our overnight stop on the way to Birthday Bash 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a breathtaking sight, but the best parts are the smiling faces. 

 

 

 

 

 

Bluegrass to Green

We are parked in a nearly empty field near the little airport runway.  When I left after breakfast to chat up some new Airstream friends, the camping area was busy with loading and packing, the stage was cranking up for Sunday schedule and a hundred or so "day trippers" were parked outside the fence.  When we looked up at nearly three, the field was nearly empty.  Just a few Grillbillie vehicles down at the end in their exclusive camping area and many more picking up all the necessary festival trimmings.  It's like the old craft show days --last ones out.

It has been four days of "Rough Camping" in a big open field.  Good neighbors, new friends and sometimes a breeze.  Though it got over 100 degrees one day, it always cooled to the 60's at night and and we slept comfortably with the last plaintive licks from a nearby jam to issue in the night.  (The low sad songs seem to like the moonlight.)

We have had a great time at our first ever music festival.  Really, your first?

So we will pull out early tomorrow and head for I-80.  We have a few errands and about 200 miles to tow, but we have road music to help us on our way.

Bluegrass 101

Well I probably don't know much about Bluegrass, but I know that it started with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and he was doing OK until he added Earl Flatt and Lester Scruggs (or was that...?  ) and then things really started to skyrocket.   I'm pretty sure that Allison Krauss is mainstream bluegrass still and that Robert Plant guy must be too 'cause they sing together.  That guitar that hangs horizontally on a strap is a Dobro unless it has pedals  and then it ain't.
And if  I was  not already soo knowledgeable,  attending a really Great Bluegrass festival like the "Out Among The Stars" Festival in Benton Pennsylvania would polish up my bona fides.   Yeah, I KNOW  "Out Among The Stars" is a Waylon Jennings song -- I AM from  Alabama --but the OATS folks know that he's country and don't hold it against him.  (Just don't say "Folk" around this bunch unless it has "kin" in front. )

We found our way here by the good graces of Mandolin Dave, an Airsteamer who answered  my request on the Airforums Webpage.  We had a week to cross Pennsylvania prior to the Birthday Bash Rally on the Fourth and  asked
for suggestions.  Pave pointed us to the OATS webpage and we are very thankful.

Dave is a "Grillbillie", "that infamous group of bluegrass musicians and fans from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, Rhode Island, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and the rest of the nearby galaxy."  They play and listen, attend festivals together, camping out and Grilling.
The Grillbillies are the force behind this great festival and the bands they support and  play in turn out for a reunion with the family.  There are bands with big buses and multiple  CD's for sale and talented local bands with great pickers and  a sound we rookies  think is just as stellar.  The fans and the pickers mix freely and greet each other warmly.  There are informal Jam sessions going on all night and day and workshops for every instrument.

So there we were, settled into the shade of a large tent, breeze relieving the  90+ heat, cool drinks nearby (and deep fried Oreos, if ya'll are so inclined.) The sound was great and we were between sets.  The announcer, a likable and real knowledgeable guy, interrupts himself to hail a old guy crossing in front of the stage.

"There's Bill Monroe.  Glad to see you here again sir."

The gentleman  in jeans and a white shirt, wavy grey hair and flip-up sunglasses waved and crossed to the area where the last band were assembling to greet fans and sell stuff.  They too greeted "Bill" warmly and they talked a while before he crossed back to our tent and sat in the first row, just a few feet in front of us.

"BILL MONROE.  I"M SITTING TEN FEET FROM BILL MONROE!!"

"Isn't he.......???"she says?

"I COULD REACH OUT AND TOUCH BILL MONROE!!!"

"But wouldn't he be about the same age as your dad -- nearly 100 ?", my ever realistic spouse inquires.

Well of course it wasn't Bill.  A namesake,  we find by delicate inquiry, but it was clear that Bill's spirit was all around here and if he were here, he would be out among these fans  warmly and generously greeting .  They are family and it shows in everything they do to make even rookies like me welcome.  My Bluegrass education continues....

There are no pictures here because mine won't compare to those on the web page AND that page has links to videos of the bands we saw -- well worth some of your time.

OATS website

Stone

We had a neighbor in St Louis, a scholar, an educator, and a gentleman. This equated to pretty boring for a fifteen year old, until he reported back from a sabbatical year in Pennsylvania that he was living in a HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD STONE FARMHOUSE. Now that was interesting. I couldn't wait to hear more.

 Were the walls cold to the touch in the winter?

Did it have a wood stove?

Were there warm nooks beside a kitchen hearth?

I had lots of queries about plumbing and maintenance and dry stone foundations to prepare for the hundred year old farm house (and huge stone barn) I would eventually own and cherish. The answers never came and it seems likely that the farmhouse will not replace Airstream in the years I have left. Nevertheless I have enjoyed these last few days driving the back roads of Berks County, marveling at the best stone barns I've ever seen. You must excuse me if I have WAY too many pictures of stone -- Pennsylvania Field Stone walls two feet thick, huge timber frames, little windows near the hearth that I thought were an Appalachian thing --a granny window--but I find at Valley Forge and learn they go back to Welsh farms and beyond.

 

Hearth window on General Varnum’s quarters at Valley Forge.










Massive walls of a failed  Anthracite furnace at Hopewell.







   Nineteenth century farm house at Crows Nest Preserve



On a Natural Lands Trust Preserve --Crows Nest -- we were lucky to catch the Preserve manager with a spare minute and he toured us through the barn renovated to house a day camp for visiting children.  He gave us a quick orientation and turned us loose to hike mowed paths along French Creek, among the fields being mowed for hay and other native grass fields that will  stand until July to give the critters  cover for nesting. Other buildings were being renovated for staff housing and several other stone barns stand ready for crops and educational uses.  The farm machinery was modern and the farm practices ideal for sustaining the land and the the creatures on it.  Surprisingly there was little of the sprawl  and clutter of  disused stuff around the buildings, something I had come to associate with every active farm. (Dad used to tell us to study the rafters of the barns we visited. "A farmer doesn't have time to run to town for a part.  He saves everything.  I bet you could build most of a tractor with stuff you find in corners here."  )

Here is a link to some of the sights at Crows Nest Preserve and stone parts from the last century.  There are so many, many more, but Patty won't let me stop on the narrow little roads.
CLICK HERE FOR CROWS NEST PRESERVE PICTURES