• June 19, 2009 (Third Friday)
• July 10, 2009
• August 14, 2009

Camping

• July 15-20 Finger Lakes, NY extended camping trip
  
  I just went to make reservations for the July camping trip and they are completely booked at the campground that I was hoping to get us into that is in the same town as the music festival. I am now proposing we go approximantly 8 miles down the road to Buttermilk Falls State Park
  
  Since it is looking like I need to make these reservations asap, I will be making reservations this coming Monday, Feb. 16.
  
  I need a commitment of those interested. It is looking like it will be $15 per site, per day two tents max per site. But I am going to split the ulimate total cost by person. I am going to make reservations for 5 sites on Monday. At this point, I am going to make all 5 sites for arrival Thursday July 16th with a departure on Monday the 20th. If you are thinking of going up on Wednesday, let me know and I am sure that we can tack on Wednesday no problem later on, Because of the popularity of the music festival, the sites are going quickly for the period Thursday -Sunday when the festival is occurring. If you do decided to come up on wednesday, you will be responsible yourself for the total site charge that day. It will not be split amongst everyone else.
  
  I need to ask this since it is going to be approx $300 upfront money for me to put out to reserve, I am asking for a deposit of $20 per person. If you change your mind about going, as long as you let me know by June 16th, you will get your deposit back 100%, after that, it depends if I can fill the site etc.
  
  The surrounding area attractions include an incredible number of Antiques and wineries. Also found a notation of a hard cider brewery right in the town we will be camping in.
  
  The list of outdoor activities is huge including hiking and biking trails, canoeing and kayaking on Cayuga Lake. I also want to say as a native New Yorker, it is probably a great place to do some road biking as there is very little traffic on these back country roads and the terrain is rolling hills.
  
  And a finally, after browsing all those antiques, listening to the wonderful music, drinking wine and hard cider, biking for miles through the beautiful countryside (I must warn , a little smelly as We new Yorkers are known for raising cows that produce some of the finest cheese east of the Mississippi) Of course we have to eat. The Moosewood Restaurant of the cookbook fame is actually located in Ithaca, only a few miles from where we will be camping.
  
  www.fingerlakes.org
  www.taughannock.com
  
  Camping portion of this trip: contact Trish O.
  
  Hey and while we're camping, let's check out the:
  
  19th annual Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance! July 16-19 Trumansburg Fairgrounds Trumansburg NY
  
  FEATURING THE BEST IN AFRICAN, ZYDECO, ROOTS, ROCK, COUNTRY, REGGAE, BLUEGRASS, IRISH, NATIVE AMERICAN, LATIN, WORLD BEAT, GOSPEL, SWING, CAJUN, OLD-TIME & MORE!
  
  It's too early for a schedule or list of performers but it is sure to be a good time!
  
  There are many ticket options. You can go for one day or get a 4 day pass, it's up to you!
  
  Early bird tix purchases are from Feb 14th to May 1. For example an adult 4 day pass is $75, but a one day pass is about $40. From May 2 - July 10 prices go up a bit as you might expect an adult 4 day pass is $95 and one day- still around $40.
  
  Check it out at www.grassrootsfest.org/festival
  
  Questions about this Festival? Contact: Laura M
  
  (Trish O.)
  
  
• Aug. 7-9 Wild Women Weekend camping
  
  Hey, all you wild women out there! As you have read in the newsletters, the date has changed for our 7th annual Wild Women Weekend gathering. In case you haven�t had the good fortune to join with us in past years, now�s the time. We share good times, self-sufficiency, food and drink, physical activity (to a certain extent!) and a relaxing good time.
  
  We are planning on the weekend of August 7-9. The place has not yet been decided, but as usual, we try to pick a site close to home so that way, if you want to join with us for a day or two, or only a day, or only an afternoon, we will be within reach. Stay tuned for more information.
  
  Invite your friends (female)! Invite your neighbors (female, of course)! (Barb P)
  
  
• Sept. 18-20 Ocean City camping and parasailing
  
  Hey, all you wild women out there! As you have read in the newsletters, the date has changed for our 7th annual Wild Women Weekend gathering. In case you haven�t had the good fortune to join with us in past years, now�s the time. We share good times, self-sufficiency, food and drink, physical activity (to a certain extent!) and a relaxing good time.
  
  We are planning on the weekend of August 7-9. The place has not yet been decided, but as usual, we try to pick a site close to home so that way, if you want to join with us for a day or two, or only a day, or only an afternoon, we will be within reach. Stay tuned for more information.
  
  Invite your friends (female)! Invite your neighbors (female, of course)! For information, contact Barb P.
  
  
• Picture from a recent camping trip
  
  


• Rocks State Park April 18
  
  We were a rocking at Rock State Park on April 18th.
  It nearly killed me.
  Five of us jumped out of the vehicles.
  Let�s walk! Now! The road to Harford County was confining.
  We�re ready! Let�s go! Let�s dance!
  That coiled, pent up energy was spent in less than the first 100 yards.
  Time for a break?
  You betcha! Where is the top anyways?
  And the trail started so innocuously.
  Is this the right one?
  
  At about one hundred and fifty yards later
  And about 15 or 20 minutes in the air.
  I was huffing.
  Experiencing that light air feeling you have just before the Stroke.
  Hey look! Those are our cars, the tiny things down there.
  
  We made it to the top.
  We�d have got there sooner
  If we�d of been able to get by this family of lost couch potatoes.
  They weren�t sweating, they weren�t even breathing hard.
  Just a family of aimless buffaloes ambling to the rocks.
  I was embarrassed. My heart was pounding SOS.
  And they weren�t even breaking a sweat.
  That�s when I found out about the parking lot for potatoes.
  Slice them, dice �em, beat them, whip them.
  But you know,
  They were out there.
  
  We got to the rocks well rested after ambling behind the potato family.
  These rocks the size of either your car or the garage
  Were stacked like poker chips, with the grooves not lining up.
  Just arbitrarily put there by the giant�s child long before our time.
  
  And people all over them. Where did they come from?
  There was a historical marker.
  But I couldn�t see it.
  The potato family again.
  You can�t pass them and you can�t see through them.
  
  It said that the Indians use to come up here and dance.
  Perhaps a pre-Columbian disco.
  There was a wedding here�.perhaps.
  Among the family of the Eagles.
  Chief Flying Eagle. I can�t really remember his first name.
  It might have been Sitting, or Breathing Hard Eagle.
  He and the wife married the younger Eagle off to Miss Fern Who Shakes in the Wind.
  
  Wow! I�ll betcha she cut a mean figure on the dance hollow.
  
  Nature provided these nice natural seats that the proud Father and Mother oversaw things from.
  The seats are kind of up above things.
  You may want to wait for the light-headed feeling to go away before you clamber on up to them.
  The drop is kind of sudden.
  You could be half way to the car before you know it.
  But they are comfortable.
  
  It was all down hill from there.
  A nice walk in the woods with the friends.
  With a trout stream to follow back to the cars.
  Dave or Lynn got the first tick of the season.
  Congratulations!
  And Barb�s step counter said we walked 4 miles
  Give or take 3 miles.
  But it didn�t matter how far.
  It was long enough to have a good time.
  But you got to be there to have it.
  What a beautiful day.
  
  (Scott W, 2009)
  
  
• Memoirs from the CAMPING AT WESTMORELAND STATE PARK
  
  It was a white bread vanilla campground with nothing to recommend it except the privacy, the stillness, the polite campers, the world class companionship, and the fantastic food.
  
  One hike and you'd seen it all. Go to Fossil Beach to look for a sharks tooth and there were all these little children panning the shores of the Potomac sifting for gold. So many it looked like California in 1848. The shark's tooth didn't stand a chance; unfortunately neither did the kids. They were weeks, months, maybe years too late. There were just too few teeth and too many sifters.
  
  And then there were the kayaks. God and the State of Virginia didn't want us to go kayaking. It was too windy one day and the next we found out we had to stay in sight of the Kayak stand.
  
  Yup, we were stuck in this little green paradise of politeness and privacy with only the silent peacefulness, great food, and ourselves. We were going to have to rough it. There was nothing to complain about! They had all the fire wood we needed, the boy scouts were everything they were suppose to be including quiet and blind, there was a rude crowd up the road acting just like us. Singing happy birthday around the campfire during happy time -- I mean quiet time.
  
  It was a tough weekend with nothing to do but soak up the serenity, watch the fire, listen to the insect philharmonic, and relax. Ahhh! The good life.
  
  That was it. If you are curious about the camp trip you can stop here, get busy and go back to work and leave us soaking up the serenity.
  
  Of course the sponge can only soak up so much serenity. Too much of nothing is too much for some. So we went to visit the Lees of Stratford Hall. A couple hundred years ago and seven miles down the road the Lees set forth on this continent to make their fortune. And did they ever. They also liked this private little area and proceeded to make it not so quiet. Thomas Lee put up a little 18 room hovel with walls 2 feet thick. Why 2 feet thick? I don't know. It wasn't the Indians, they'd been run off to West Virginia by this time. It might have been an early form of air conditioning. But if Thomas Lee wanted 2 feet brick walls, 2 feet his 600-man slave and indentured servant work force did.
  
  Ah the good old days. Just think up these little fantasy projects and put the force on it while you learn music, fencing, dancing and turning out babies. Eight was the average but one Lee managed eleven.
  
  So we have this situation where these folks are the Bill Gates' of the era. Thomas's kid had a couple of musicians he used to pack up and send ahead so he could arrive to music at the neighbors. I guess if you didn't have a radio it beats Negro spirituals by a people singing about crossing over the River Jordan to get away from you.
  
  So the music arrived, Thomas arrived Let's dance!
  
  The money flowed like wine. Of course over the generations, what the parents made the kids blew. And by Robert E. Lee's time his famous daddy was on his second rich wife. This one was from the richest family in Virginia. But Governor Light Horse Harry Lee's habits were so well known that her daddy drew up a prenuptial agreement.
  
  Governor Lee came home from his 3rd term and they locked him up in a debtors' prison for two years. Politics were different then; you actually came out of service with the same money you didn't have when you went in. It was a service to serve. So off to the debtors gaol, BAD DOG! (If we could only stick the present day politicians who defunded and deregulated the regulators, the commodities traders who speculated with money they didn't have for commodities they didn't really want, the mortgage bundlers and investment bankers who passed poor debt bundled to the good debt to unsuspecting buyers, and the credit swap & credit derivative specialists who just bet which way the interest rates would go and then they all came to us with the hand when the economy went south and someone had to come up with the bucks. If we had that debtors' gaol, they might have thought about it a little harder rather than thinking 'Why worry? I got a golden parachute.' The threat of a debtors' jail and we might of saved a trillion dollars. Ahh but what the heck as our leaders says - several Brazilians, a Trillion, don't sweat it, deficits don't matter.)
  
  Anyway, at six-years-old Robert E. Lee, his brothers, sisters and Mommy caught the boat out of Stratford and off to Alexandria, Virginia, they went. Fortunately, because Grandpa King Carter made that little prenuptial agreement, they were able to get a modest house. It stands today in old town, a shadow compared to Stratford but pretty nice in my book.
  
  Daddy got to stay. He might have been broke but people still listened to him, except in Baltimore. He got the poop kicked out of him defending a Baltimore newspaper and publisher friend. He was never the same. Innocents still come up to Baltimore from Alexandria to be mauled. No one stands up for what's left of the SUN, so some things have changed.
  
  His son Robert E. Lee went to West Point and graduated second in his class. Funny, the guy that graduated first became a lawyer and vanished into history. Robert took up that fine Lee tradition and married that rich little Custis cutie Mary, George Washington's step-great-grand daughter. Robert E. is now richer than Bill Gates, but Robert E. Lee sticks with the Army. We know how that story ends.
  
  Interestingly enough his wife, richer than God, elected to go with him when he got transferred to Fort Monroe (Hampton, Va.); St. Louis, Missouri; Brooklyn, N.Y.; West Point, N.Y.; and Baltimore. They would take the kids who were old enough and leave the others at Arlington with her mother. The trip to St. Louis involved 3 different trains, a canal boat (mules), and a steamboat down the Ohio and another down the Mississippi to St Louis.
  
  The Lee's wander into history, Robert had brothers, sisters, and cousins on both sides of the Potomac. They are still around, for example Gov. Blair Lee of Maryland.
  
  Stratford Hall idled into history when the Lees left. It has guides now. They pick up quaint accents and southernisms at the gate on the way in and probably lose them by the 7-11 store on the way out.
  
  The house had 9 rooms upstairs for the family and none of them were bathrooms or kitchens. The ground level was for household support. A warm-up kitchen (as the main kitchen was an out building), weaving room, store room, teacher's room & classroom, head servant of household room, etc.
  
  The family had the nine rooms with the breeze and the view. With no air conditioning and no bathrooms, the breeze was probably very important. At night time if you had that urge for a dump, you just pulled the old chamber pot out from under the bed, performed, pushed it back, and back to beddy bye. It was a very pungent age. One of the 600 non-hired help would make it disappear the next day.
  
  There were only three sleeping rooms in a family where 8 kids was the standard. Usually there was a loss of several kids before adulthood. The parent's room had a crib or two depending on just where they were with that year's crop of kids. As the children got older, they just dumped them in the boys' or girls' room. The kids all slept in the same bed -- one good bed wetter would spoil that party. Things must have gotten interesting around puberty. I guess they probably shared the same chamber pot, too. Nothing like an audience. Back then they were close families.
  
  I don't recall seeing a closet, dresser, chest or bath tub. They did have a laundry manned by the non-hired help in an outbuilding. So unless they walked around naked that would indicate an extra change of clothes. Those were the old good old days? Clean clothes on a dirty body?
  
  Interesting to have musicians to go ahead when you visit the neighbors and still have six boys in a bed, and a crib with a baby plus maybe a one- or two-year-old in another crib in the master bedroom. I don't believe there were too many secrets in those houses.
  
  In the magnificent main room the floors were heart pine. Today we don't have heart pine because we don't allow the pine tree to grow old enough to establish the red heart wood. That floor today looks very smooth unfinished with brown gray color and very tight graining. The guide said in the old days they oiled the floor; it would have been the color of smooth and polished redwood.
  
  In that same magnificent room, the walls had intricate fashioned panels. Four of these panels were doors that led up to the roof to a porch that use to go between the two massive chimneys. When one got tired of dancing on the back porch, you could cruise topside for some privacy and air.
  
  Speaking of privacy, most of the heavy hitters in the family had portraits on the wall. All were painted when the subject was in young adulthood and all the women had on these very interesting, very low cut dresses. I guess after eight to eleven kids they were too busy chasing the little ones to sit for another painting.
  
  I can just see my parents in the Lee house during that age during a night of partying and dancing.
  
  'Daddy dearest, Mr. Robert and I are going up to the roof to take some airs.'
  'Not in that outfit you aren't!'
  Maybe the low cut was again just a form of air conditioning.
  
  So today that long-to-the-ankle dress with the very low square cut top would have probably caused me to stare and lose an eyeball or two. The horrors, the out rage, shock and awe, is that woman crazy?
  
  But back in the day with old square jawed imperturbable George Washington who'd seen the all the finest low cut dresses of the age on all the finest in the country and never cracked a smile, what would he have done if he'd seen the Olympic women volleyball outfits of today. I think he'd probably have swallowed his wooden teeth and had a heart attack.
  
  The more things change the more they stay the same.
  
  We left the Lee abode behind with its pronounced accents and quaint southernisms, and motored back into the 21st century. Back to the camp ground where we cooked over an open fire, and had an excellent pot luck dinner. Fat and happy, everyone slept well except Barb who kept throwing rocks at Scott Bayne's tent to stop the snoring. (editor's note 'Ah -- but will the real Scott fess up and stand up?! With apologies to Scott!') They really need more glass windows in tents. By the next morning it was all over except for the poison ivy.
  
  A few of us on the way home stopped by that hot bed of Maryland sin at Colonial Beach Virginia. Back in the days before the Lees, the king of Great Britain decided that the Maryland-Virginia dividing line was the south shore of the Potomac River. This means all the fish, all the products of Washington's Blue Plains water treatment center, and all the water belongs to us, the citizens of Maryland.
  
  This has bothered Virginia for some time. Especially around the Washington suburbs where they use a lot of bathwater. What was good enough for the Lee's isn't good enough now. Every so often Virginia has to grit its teeth and go to Annapolis and say 'Pretty please, can we have some more water?' We make them wait and then say 'You can have a little more' which is always less than they wanted. They go to court, they lose, and we still have the water. Very unhappy campers.
  
  To add to this sorry state of affairs some enterprising fellow figured out if he built a building on the shore at Colonial Beach and extended it over the water he could bring that sin-filled game of Keno and other fine Maryland Lottery products to the deprived people of Virginia. Sort of like how the slots in Delaware service all the mathematically challenged people of Maryland. I'm not sure how well this is working because when we stopped by there weren't a whole lot of people demanding the Maryland Lottery services. Perhaps education is a little better down here. There weren't a whole lot of people on either side of the state line. It was so entertaining that we hustled out there before we fell asleep. We never found out if a beer was cheaper in Virginia or Maryland. Other important legal issues were also unanswered. Can you take an open container from Maryland to Virginia? If you screw up in Maryland, can you get locked up in Virginia? If you hit the $50,000 and you live in Virginia, who do you pay the taxes to? If you trip in Maryland on a Virginia beer cap on the deck and fall into Virginia and break your wallet, where do you go to complain? Stephen L. Miles? Or do they have high-powered lawyers who work for only you in Virginia, too? Is the Stephen L. Miles preferred customer card even good in Virginia? If you want to go fishing off the end of the Keno pier, whose fishing license do you need? I'm glad we left; it was a very confusing town.
  
  While we are at it, there was not one bathing beauty at Colonial Beach. This must be where you go when they give you the boot at Virginia Beach. These bathers were not improving our water. When you can't improve the Potomac, this is a serious Maryland problem. We should bring this up next time they want to extend their water intake pipes a couple more feet into our river.
  
  That was the last hurrah. It was all over except for the poison ivy and the smiles. May you be serenaded to sleep by the Insect Philharmonic. Reading it ain't nothing like being there. (Trish)
• Myths and Legends of Harper's Ferry, West Virginia by Thesersa
  
  Was it a myth that during the weekend of 10/12-10/14 there were 10 ACT members wandering the streets of Harper's Ferry, West Virginia?
  
  Was it a legend that these same members survived the perils of the KOA campsite, some brave souls for two nights, with pints of ale and swigs of alcohol?
  
  Was it a legend that 6 of these members canoed the waters of the Potomac River and successfully traversed the raging rapids?
  
  Was it a myth that a particular Pub in Harper's Ferry still echoes with the voices and laughter of these same ACT members?
  
  Was it a myth that some of these same members will not cross the Atlanta Ocean, to witness the view of the Shenandoah from Jefferson Rock?
  
  Myth or legend in Harpers Ferry? You decide. (Theresa)
  
  
  
  

Hiking and Backpacking

• June 6 - National Trails Day trail maintenance (George)
  
  
• Six months of Hiking
  
  

Date	Place
Feb. 21	Northpoint State Park
April 18	Rocks State Park
June 20	TBA
August 15	TBA
Sept. 17	TBA
Oct. 10	Billy Goat Trail




• Pictures from one of our hikes