Kentucky Music Week

I talked Mike into going with me to Kentucky Music Week

find out about this great event at website: www.kentuckymusicweek.com

.We left early on Friday, June 19 and made it to our destination - My Old Kentuck Home State Park in Bardstown, Kentucky around midnight. Camping spots were WAY... smaller than we had imagined from the map on the website, and also there was a severe grade on the pad. Real challenge trying to level her up. There was such a huge step to get off the porch.

We met a lot of nice people - and were graced with camping fairy gifts many nights! A nice family from Kentucky gave us a lot of firewood. Betty from Florida, in her awesome little new Shasta, brought us some delightful keylime pie ( she shared her recipe for it and a few other easy pies - which I made for our impromtu "dessert jam" )

A couple driving by gave us a thumbs up on the vardo and we invited them to come in for a tour. Thrilled to find out they were also dulcimer players here for KMW! Mary Jane and Jean were are first KMW friends and we enjoyed talking with them throughout the week.

Bardstown was a quaint little town and we walked the downtown shops and went on a trolly tour to Heaven Hill distillery.

We started off the week with a little trauma. Early Monday morning a little rain storm blew up. Mike had decided to sleep in a little tent instead of the mattress on the floor of the vardo. I sent him a text - "You dry?" reply - "no!" I put on my shoes and went out to help put a plastic sheet over the tent and as we were clipping it on I made a quick trip to the loo and came back to find Mike standing on the vardo porch saying " we need to find a hospital" I looked down at his muddy foot to see his big toenail had been ripped back. Walking in the mud with flipflops proved to be dangerousewith all the exposed roots . We called Nancy the KMW director and found a hospital fairly close. The ER doctor came into the room and shuddered when she saw Mike's toe - all bloody and muddy, nail hanging loose. I said, "You're a doctor, you're not supposed to do that" she said " I don't do well with toenails" Well after a couple of standard ER hours of waiting - the nail was removed, toe cleaned and bandaged and we were out of there - Mike hobbling with his protective boot.

We made it to Boston School the location for the KMW by around 9:30 - The classes actually started at 9, but to our good fortune there had been a fire alarm and everyone had been out of the building - so we really didn't miss much. The gods are with us!!! The week was filled with classes on Hammered Dulcimer, Autoharp, Singing and Tin Whistle for me, Mike enjoyed making two lovely stained glass pieces, a drum out of a gourd and campground cooking( he had intended on doing a dancing class - but not destined to happen with his toe situation!)

Back to the campsite one night, we found the campground fairy had left us a nice wooden step to get up on our porch, another night there was a bright orange leveling pad by the vardo! Folks were really generous. We gave a lot of tours - think I should put out a donation bucket for future improvements!

Here are a few pics with the Emma Rose dolled up in her finest (courtesy of Mary Janes blog - I borrowed these pics cause I forgot to take any pictures that week!)

I added a flower garland that has lights (purple of course) Check out the new carpet I made for the porch. These are recycled carpet tiles I have cut to form a quilt like pattern - pretty unique eh? I have some challenges keeping the pieces in place - they come with these little adhesive dots, but the rain and heat are taking a toll on them. I may try to find a way to sew them together using plastic lacing.

Check out the groovy little colorful lights I found at Wally world. They are those paper lantern styles - although they are made out of nylon - so they won't melt in the rain! They work great clipped to the spines of the umbrella .

We really enjoyed our first full week camping in Kentucky - minus the setback with the big toe! and a little muggy heat which made cooking our dinner over a campfire a real chore - gotta buy a little electric grill - sure Wally world will have something that will make dinner in less than an hour!!

Our last day in Bardstown we found this fabulous family owned restaurant - it was way too hot to try and cook over an open fire. Lunch was amazing and we made a reservation for dinner. T hen we went to visit Mary Jane and Jean at their campground - toured their big rig, saw Mary Janes new baby - an amazing sounding mountain dulcimer ( Mike said he wouldn't mind learning to play that one!) We invited them to join us for dinner. Great home style southern cooking and fun conversation - a memorable end to our week. Think we might do this one again!