Day Three began early with continental breakfast at the hotel at 7:30 a.m. Then our friend Ken arrived and took us for an interesting tour of the area around the hotel. He and his wife, Jacqui had lived and worked in this area for many years, so he knows it well. He showed us their home from the past and explained what had happened in the area over the last few years. We picked up Jacqui and headed for the park where the folk festival was being held. One of their friends had gone earlier to stake us out a spot in front of the main stage.

The festival is held in the river valley, so the viewing area for all the stages (7 plus the main stage) are on hillsides. There are no bad seats. We spent the day moving from stage to stage and trying to keep cool, since it was a hot, sunny day and there wasn't many shady spots. We were told that there were about 20,000 people attending the event each day but it was very well organized, so everything (concessions, toilets facilities, etc.) seemed to work well.

The performances went until after midnight on Saturday but we were all fading around 11 p.m., so we missed the last performer.

We were up again early on Sunday and this time it was our turn to line up for a space to lay our tarp, so we arrived at the festival well before the doors opened. The first 600 people in the line got the choice spots but they had to line up before 7 a.m. for that priviledge. We were let inside in orderly group and still got a central spot on the hill where we lay out the tarp to stake out our space.

The day started with some very black clouds and even a short downpour, so we were expecting some poor weather, but by midday the rain clouds were gone and we had another hot, sunny day ahead of us. Mid afternoon, Kari and I had to escape to a small shady area as we were baking on the hillside and I don't do well with the hot sun.

The evening performance lasted until after 11:30 and this time we stayed to the end and joined everyone in singing Four Strong Winds which is apparently a Festival tradition. Then we packed up all our gear (in the dark) and hiked back to the car.

I'll talk about the performers in my next post.