the odessey continues

I t has been great here in Tennessee.The weather is now cool, but we had serious rain only on Friday afternoon, and it was for a short time. We did have tornado warnings but they evaporated, without harm. Themusic here has been phenomenal. Over 90 different musical groups of all types, mostly bluegrass, some country. One harmonica player is unbelievable, he is so good.

Realistically, there is almost too much music. There are 5 different stages, and sometimes, they only play for 15 minutes at a time. Since most of the groups are unknown to us, we have to go to the different stages to check them out and then decide who who you like and who you don't, and decide where to from there. There are four days of the festival, running from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM. There is a fifth day, which we attended for a while, which is geared to children. There are activities and programs and music directed to the children.

There are old buildings, museums, old time crafts and vendors and all kinds of food at reasonable prices. This happens to be the 30th annual event. They must agree with the "too much" thought as next year it is going to be 3 days.s

The campground is called Volunteer Park and it is technically located in North Knoxville. They have a nice facility, including what they call an opry building. During this period of the "Homecoming", they have "jam" sessions every night in this building. There are an amazing number of very good amateur musicians here in the park. Usually these sessions run from about 7 to 9. This week, they have been running until 11, but last night, they went to almost midnight. I finally decided to join in and did "Grandfathers clock" on the Banjo and "Believe me if all those endearing young charms" on the fiddle. Happily both came out well. There is a woman, that sketches the performers, and did mine and it is going to join the others on the wall along with Don Tober, from Buffalo who was here in Oct 2007.

We learned that some of the people know Chuck Hardwick from Satsuma very well. Their names are Don Norris and Jan, and Jim Koffman.

The cat has not enjoyed all aspects of the trip, but is getting antsys.She figures something is up. We plan to leave the festival about 3-4, and head for Florida. Maybe 200 miles toay, and the rest Monday, getting into Satsuma by daylight Monday. Will report in then, after we get our dsl back on.