Black Sheep Family Reunion

The last weekend in July, Boo and I took a road trip to the central Oregon Coast mountain range for a multi-day music and arts festival.  This post covers the road trip and the festival.  Sorry I've been away from the blog for a bit.  It being Summer, I'm doing more, and writing less.  More content for later!

Drive to Waldport, Almost

Signs at Entrance

In another classic planning mishap, Boo had to work the morning we intended to leave for the Black Sheep Family Reunion music and art festival (BSFR).  Our destination was 3 hours by car (so 4 hours by microbus) and the gates opened at noon.  While Boo worked, I leisurely got the bus packed, and we hit the road just after noon.  Since Boo hadn't slept much the night before, she crawled into the back and napped after we passed Wilsonville.  She re-appeared between Corvallis and Philomath, joining me for the incredibly fun drive down OR-34.  The drive prior to OR-34 was typical Summer Friday freeway stuff: slow, hot and filled with impatient drivers.  The sides of the bus acted like the edges of a bubble, though, keeping that energy out, while allowing our smiles through.  OR-34 is a grapevine of switch-backs, steep climbs and drop-offs along the Alsea River.  As I drove it, I laughed with joy.  I dare to dream it in a sports car that's tuned for that kind of thing.  I imagine it would be spectacular.  We were buffeted by an older Subaru from a particularly angry pickup truck who appeared to flick chewing tobacco at us as he later passed.  Hilarious.

The BSFR was first marked with a small sign "300 feet" before the otherwise not-terribly characterized turn-off.  There was a small sign, though, and we were able to navigate it, bringing 2 others from the "main road" with us, including the older Subaru.  We climbed a narrow "this has to be the wrong" road, bore left at a "Y" which was marked with a simple arrow on a cardboard box onto a gravel road.  Holding Hapy at a 5mph lumber, we eventually happened upon a gate with a troupe of hippies hanging around.  "This must be it," Boo mused.  We were greeted with a chorus of "nice bus" comments, and a vague direction about continuing down the road to the next gate.

Camping the Glade

View of stage from bonfire

A few more turns and road dip/climbs and we suddenly were upon the festival camping.  We asked a Vanagon driver what we were supposed to do and he said "get out and join us for a beer".  LOL.  We ended up doing that later, actually, but first we met with the next clump of hippies running the place to get a camping spot.  At that second gate, we were waved to the side so the older Subaru could get by.  Turns out, the driver was the drummer for one the Friday bands (KrazyFingers, I think).  We later thanked him for running interference on the pickup, and we had a good laugh about it.  Once the Subaru was past, we were pointed to the grassy area just to our left.  "Just don't mess with my cones," he said.  We rolled over to where we were pointed and Kenny, a blonde-haired, beaded fella with a huge smile, waved us in, and helped us get level.  The rest of the weekend was spent making friends with that group of festers.  We even found Justice, a friend we made at Horning's Hideout Hootenanny over memorial Day weekend (See: So Starts Camping Season 2014).  Between acoustic guitars, bubble-making equipment and a soccer ball, the grassy glade had activity most of the weekend.

Events, Art, Food, Crafts

Black Sheep Circus

Once the pop-top was up, and the camp-couch pulled out, Boo and I grabbed a couple of beers and headed for the stage.  The main bowl was lined with craft vendors along "house-left" (left side facing the stage), food vendors at the back, circus acts practicing on "house-right" and a large installation art piece at the very front of "house-left".  There were multiple artists working on that large piece all weekend.  In the circus space, there were a variety of events happening.  Sometimes, there were jugglers or tumblers.  Other times, Kevin (neighbor from the Glade) would bring down his bubble-stuff and create massive bubbles that would float across the front of the stage.  The mixture of performance art and music was really fantastic.  I didn't know what to expect of the performance stuff, so I expected little; we were well rewarded.  The fire dancers on Saturday night (Black Sheep Circus) were really great, and, though we missed them, we heard that Circus Luminescence stole the show later that night with an interpretive performance about technology and how it's over-use is creating barriers between us rather than connecting as FB, etc promise to be.

Hiking
The venue offered more than just a stage and booths.  Being located in the middle of the coastal mountains, there were many acres of trails.  Boo and I went exploring with some of our new-found friends on Saturday, missing the early acts.  Mary Sue pulled us together and gave us a walking history of the festival while Doug and Paul played botanist, identifying plants for medicinal, recreational or food purposes.  We found a second venue where another festival stage could be used.  We saw old-growth forest, small one-tent dug-out camp spots sprinkled along the trails, deep ravines.  As much as the festival was a break from day-to-day work, the exposure to deep nature was especially unexpected and resonated deeply for the next week.

Abbreviated Music Review

Jug Dealers

No music festival attendance is without some form of music review.  We honestly didn't see many of the bands.  Some were really good, like Candelaria whose lead singer gave all she had wiggling on stage and belting out in Spanish to a well-kept backing band.  Jim Lewin was a festival highlight, getting called back for an encore while the Smirkin' Merkins were a definite must-miss.  Frankly, they were just awful.  Weird, poorly executed and for an afternoon festival crowd, their lyrics were highly not kid appropriate.  If they come back next year, I'll make a point of being far far away during their performance.  Late that evening, McTuff was dialed so loud that it hurt my ears, but they were so well mixed that we could hear them perfectly back at the bus.  We sat in the dark staring at stars while their music washed over us.  They were really good.  Just loud :)

The Jug Dealers were a band in need of direction: songs arranged with the female vocal as a lead were great.  Any tunes where the guitarist led, and she was supposed to be backing vocal didn't work as well (she just overpowered the lead, making the vocal line confusing).  Last, they had an older guy on house-right either painting a picture or joining on vocals.  He simply created chaos, honestly, and made them appear more amateurish than they really are.

Drive Home

Kevin and Mary Sue bus

Boo had to work Monday morning at 8:AM, so staying for the Sunday afternoon performances wasn't really practical.  Unfortunately, that meant we were going to miss Scott Law, Ducky Pig and Brothers and Sister; three bands we were aiming for.  Ah well.  The first year is to see if the festival is a fit.  Next year, we'll get more time off so we can do it start to finish.  Our new friends lamented our early departure nearly as much as we did, and we agreed to camp the same spot next year... for the full festival.  Hapy fired up on the first try, though we drove out of the festival grounds in limp-mode.  We stopped at a siding along the Alsea River and stood in the cool water to offset the increasing heat of the day.  By the time we hit Philomath, we figured we had pushed our luck on fuel, so we stopped.  We got over 38mpg on that partial tank.  yeah, that's right.  38mpg in a VW bus.  That's more than double what I used to typically get with the old 1700.  We stopped again at the Charbonneau District rest area to cool our heels, before the final push into Portland area traffic.  Because of some driving mis-arrangements, we collected T&C on our way through the southern end of the metro area.  While a wise use of time, it didn't create the buffer between our festival mental space and our parenting one.  That transition was especially hard.

That's it for today.  Lots of things going on, so lots of material for future posts.  As always, thanks for following along,

Scarlet Fire Department :-)