let wayyyyy to much time elapse after the festival before
sitting down to write this report, but I didn't want to forget
it all-together, so here I am trying to dig up the most memorable moments to record for all to recall! Please forgive me if I leave out anything that you thought was an unforgettable moment! We don't usually head down to the
fesival on land rush day in time to line-up and experience the true "land rush" event, but on this day the line was
slow in moving out due to heavy rains and mud, so we
were at the very end of a very long line. It was kind of fun thou, and we still were able to get to our little corner by the hyway and help Steve secure the area. I think the best part of the festival for us this year was camping next to Bill & Pat and their grandkids. We spent a lot of time together during the week and got to know them much better than we had during previous festivals. I don't think we could have picked better "neighbors" (even if Pat and I did try to kill ourselves going in and out of our camper!!) Bill's shelter became quite a jam spot for a lot of the kids in camp and that was a really cool thing to see as well as a great experience for them. Early in the week an awesome thunderstorm built in front of our eyes to the north of town and we all stood on the hill and marveled at it's grandness (yeah, it was a little erie too!) The storm never really did much more than drop a lot of rain, but it was kind of fun for us local Kansans to watch the out-of-state people get real nervous at the thought of a "kansas tornado!" We all had to laugh the next day when Andy (from the dulcimer group) brought out his shop-vac to help vacuum out the wet tents
(as it everyone brought their shop-vac camping with them!)
The crowds at the festival this year were huge- the largest that I have ever seen. On Friday and Sat nights, there were so many people that they were parking them in town and shuttling them to the festival grounds. This was pretty obvious at the bathroom & concession lines! One of the coolest things I have seen happen at Winfield happened late Friday night at this festival- the Pecan Grove became almost
"magical" with huge mobs of young people filling the streets playing music. It was a beautiful, still, clear, starry night and the atomsphere was absolutly festive- almost "Mar-di Gras" like! The jams in the streets were not the drunken, not-quite-music events like you can sometimes find ;-) but were really great music by some incredibly talented young musicians. I don't know where they all came from! After we finally forced ourselves back to our own camp, you could still hear the music and cheers coming from that side of the campground long into the morning hours. Another memorable event was the power outage that affected the entire fairgrounds on Sat afternoon. I don't know if it actually had anything to do with Tommy's stage 1 set, but it was awfully coincidental that he had just started his "Initiation" song when the power went out! It took them several hours to get everything going again.
As usual, it was a wonderful week and a very sucessful festival and it went by way to fast. It is always so sad to see it end and have to say "goodbye" to those friends that we only see once-a-year at Winfield. But, at least we still have next years festival to look forward too!
Your Froggy Mtn friend,
Renee