1918 km and 4 Showers Later

We are back! I am experiencing that post-travel let-down, you know the one, where you instantly wish to go somewhere again or at least thoroughly relive the previous adventure for a few days after having a sleep or two in your own comfy bed.

Since the former isn't an option right now, we'll have to setter with the latter. Let the reliving begin!

Itinerary Item Number One:

Attend Pagosa's Four Corners Folk Festival. Drive down Thursday evening, stay until Monday morning.

The main stage was in a tent with 1200 seats pre-set up

• Best part: The music! The beer was pretty good too.
• Worst part: The dust. They watered the main roads every day but it was still a sneezefest.
• Lesson learned? If you're set to camp in the "vehicle free" area, do arrive during the time period when the shuttles are operating.
• Rating? 4 stars! (outta 5)

One of the keys to enjoying this festival, for us, was to not expect this festival. The scale is a lot smaller, but the music was still really good, and not having as many places to be kind of reduced the "stress" of trying to decide what workshops to attend... hey... there was only one workshop tent, and the workshops had names like  Fiddle or Guitar and people showed up to the tent with their fiddles and guitars! In the first workshop we watched a bit of, the band had to pause for a while to teach people some minor barre-chords.

Unlike the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Vehicle Free Camping area was a tiny area.

When we bought our 3-Day Pass with Camping, I assumed that, like our Winnipeg Folk Festival, tons of people would be camped in this Vehicle Free area, and a few less tons in an RV area. The reality though, was that the majority was in the Vehicle camping area, maybe because they all needed to take their stand-up basses up the mountain somehow. Every "picking circle" we came across seemed to have its own stand-up bass!

The Main Stage

The bigger surprise for us, was the proximity of everything. About 30 steps from where we camped, we could see the festival site, and what I thought at first was the beer tent. As it turns out, this is actually the main stage, and it was set up with chairs so that you didn't have to get rained on in the late afternoon. You also didn't have to carry around your chair (not that it was so far to carry) but some sort of bum pillow might be advised. The other really great thing about camping right on top of the festival ground, was that you could go back to your campsite and have a meal, and still hear the bands play! It was a great experience.