Carl Sandburg & Folk Music to Grand Ole Opry

On Memorial Day we went to the Carl Sandburg Home national Historic Site for a great, free day of folk music.  Very low key.  I would love to share some of the sounds with you since I recorded most of the music on my nifty digital voice recorder.  however, when I got back to the campsite I erased it all.  OOPS!  However, I have some photos.  This was an incredibly lovely site on many acres and not very crowded  Sandburg was a collector of folk music so most of the songs referenced him or the country in some way.  We found out that Sandburg's wife was a goat geneticist and raised goats there.  We saw many goats, including 5 day old babies that we got to pet while listening to dulcimer music.  We also bought some GOAT MILK FUDGE.  A bit strange.

To my banjo buddies;  We would have fit right in:  an accordian player( we know one), a few guitars (right Don!) and one or two banjo players and we could have had the crowd on their feet!

Again, we have been so impressed with the kindness of the North Carolinians.  There is something to be said for this slow pace.  Maybe it has to do with the great and hot weather.  We are looking forward to more as we go from state to state.

We are still quite sad to have said goodbye to so many fine friends and will always have pangs about missing all of you.  But, so far (one week in) everything has lived up to all of our expectations.  It's funny how many folks look at little Celeste and think that the small size will cause us to kill each other.  Hardly.  We travel so well together and are using this time to work out all the kink that have built up in our 20 years together.  We both think we will grow a lot on this trip.

Our paradigm on this trip is quite different from all others.  In the past we have run for three weeks in whatever foreign country we have landed in.  Here, we can go at a much slower pace and sit back, reading, knitting, or daydreaming as we go.  Now, if we can only remember not to buy so much food at one time, we will be in great shape.

Last night as our first interesting meal:  cornish hen with brocoli, hominy, artichokes and mandarin oranges.  (I was determined to use as many of the canned vegetables that I had brought from Schwenksville as possible. It was a 3 can meal and I was quite pleased.)  That plus a martini made for a great evening.

On to Nashville on Tuesday where we have already reserved two seats at the Grand Old Opry for Tuesday evening. (We sat at a sandwich place, hooked up the computer to the phone and spent about two hours on our computer at a free wi-fi site researching stuff to do and sending photos.

The Grand Ole Opry.  What can i say.  A picture is worth a thousand words.After rushing from our campsite to get our tickets and then through a hasty chain resaurant dinner, we arrived at the Opry building and asked the blue dude why folks weren't going in since it was already 6:30 and the show started at 7 pm.  "Oh no," he said.  "Why would we open the doors so early.  It is, after all, only 5;30".  Duh.  We slipped into CST without ever noticing.  No signs or anything.  How rude.  What a chuckle but what a show.

the Grand Ole Opry is a raido show put on live every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday on WSM, 650 AM and on the net as well, for those of you who want to tune in.  It is the oldest continuous radio show in America, and two of the performers seem to have been there at the beginning.  Jean Shepard, who was about 85 years old had a wonderful voice and an adorable stage presence and sang as one of her three songs, Tennessee Waltz and yodeled to Wabash Cannonball.Then there was Little Jimmy Dickens, all in purple who wasn't too bad, but pretty strange. 

Here is a full view of the state.  Two hours without stop in 15 minutes sets...three songs and out.  What a great evening. the Opry is set in an enormous complex with a Franklin Mills stuyle Mall, a Regal 20, an Aquarium Restaurant where you, apparently, eat among the fishes, zillions of tacky stores....and the Gibson Banjo factory store, where unfortunately you can only watc from behind glass as they do the final construction on the banjo.  That's where we are headed today.

Finally...the art shot of the week

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Warm and Well in NC

We left Raleigh on Friday morning and arrived in the wonderful world of South Toe River Campgrounds on Friday evening.  We realized that camping would be tough because it was Memorial Day, but this was a campgrounds like no other.It looked like Levittown on a good day, or the Folk Festival on a bad day.   However, the folks were wonderful and most curious about Celeste.  We had so many visitors that we thought about putting out a sign saying "Tours by appointment only".  However, Southern folks being the way they are, every one of them left our little site with the offer of help, or firewood,etc.  And when we left, one camper even moved all his stuff so we did not have to back out.

Our first jaunt was to Mitchell Mountain which is the highest peak east of the Mississippi.  You won't see any photos however, because, being in the Smokey Mountains, we didn't see it either.  It was so fog covered that we could not even see the parking lot near the summit.

Down the mountain was all sunshine and blue skies and we had a wonderful hike to Crabtree Falls.

The best part of the day, however, was our night at the R-Buckle rodeo in Arbuckle, NC.  We started off with bronco riding...thre riders, no winners.  Then we moved on to sheep riding with 4 year olds plunked on an unfortunate mutton, held onto its back by two men and a thrid dragging the animal around for 3 seconds, at which time they let go of the kids and off he fell.  This was followed by calf riding where 8-10 year olds di sit on a bucking steer and manage to hold on until it at least got out of the pen.  One kid went up and came down like a rag doll.  This was topped off by the steer riding, which would have been a real event, had not the second of three riders gotten bucked off and lay motionless in the areno for 20 minutes while waiting for the ambulance.  All of this was accompanied by great country songs, our favorite being the famous love song, "Let me Search for your ticks."

Today we are in a lovely campgrounds near Asheville and have spent Sunday afternoon in this lovely city following a walking tour of historic sites.  Here Ellen is at a site commemorating mountain music and David is at a site commemorating the flatiron building.



The weather is warm and wonderful and we are now off to make dinner of cornish hen and hominy with, of course, a pepper martini.

On the Road

[gallery]Well the adventure has finally begun.  After a very difficult two weeks of packing and goodbyes, renting the house, then not renting the house, finally selling the mini and most awfully, saying goodbye to Layla, Ed and their family, we left, as planned on Monday May 19.  The last look at the house was far more difficult than I could ever have imagined.

We spent the first night camping in Nag's Head NC, where the only problem was that the campsite we picked out was for tents only and we had to talk the ranger out of having us pack up and move.  Then it was on to Kitty Hawk for a few hours on Tuesday.  We learned that it has only been 66 years from the Wright brothers' first flight to the first manned space flight!  Wow!

Then two ferries and an all day drive to Ocean Isle Beach to visit friends.

Two days in Ocean Isle Beach and then two days with Leon Weissman in Raleigh and then the trip really begins.

Our camper, heretofore known as Celeste is a great place to sleep and we are looking forward to spending the next three months with her.