A Muddy Visit with the Tribe

There is something, and I can't quite put my finger on it, what, tragic? grand-dadish? sad? tribal? about an older man obviously and eagerly all dressed up/prepared, reviewing the three day schedule, as he waits to go festing with his mates: Tilly hat, sunglasses, politically correct Klean Cup for beers hooked to the belt with a fastener especially made for that purpose, sunscreen, camera and white socks pulled safely all the way up.

So another year has come and gone since last year's Floyd Fest: What's the deal with you and these music festivals? As I await my departure for Hawaii on August 19, I decided to go a week early this year. I spent a few nights in the National Forest Campground Lake Sherando, admiring the ~1933 work of those young, poor, unemployed, but intrepid super US park builders, the Civilian Conservation Corps I pondered how those on today's endless unemployment benefits and lifelong food stamp programs would fare dynamiting Hampton formation sandstone, then building last 200 years bathhouses with the stones, in exchange for a meager check, a tent with 12 sausage fest roomates and a cornmeal hoecake cooked on,well, a hoe,...... in the ashy embers of a campfire.

  

It rained heavily the days I was at Lake Sherando and later the Peaks of Otter campgrounds. One late afternoon I climbed Sharp Top in gale force rains, which was erroneously  called the tallest mountain in Virginia in colonial times, and the capstone in the Washington Monument is still there to highlight the mistake Thomas Jefferson made; at ~3875, it  ain't close to many other peaks in Virginia, including the one right next to it as well as Mount Rodgers at 5729.


Peaks of Otter

 

Mushrooms of all colors and shapes popped up everywhere. Anybody got a book about the right ones to take to Floyd?

The causeway from the lake.

A man made island in the center of the lake. The kids used to swim to it from the beach.

Lichens, various mosses seemed to thrive on the rain.



Mature sandstone scree rushes (in geological time of course) to the lake. 



Eventually met up with these players.

The mud, the blood and the beer

The Crossroads at my brother's RV site. Notice what's left of his brand new Wal-Mart awning...gonna have to check with him how he ever got out that beast out of there.

Potable, if you don't mind the nozzle in the mud

Fuck the rain and mud; this is an example of why we do this shit. Eugene Hutz, leading his Ukraine gypsy punk Transylvanian circus, Gogol Bordello.

I still haven't checked how my brother and Rebecca got their beast out of this by the dictionary definition, quagmire, but I know how I did. A shot from the windshield of da shaggin' waggin, having its 5,000 pound ass ass being pulled out of the muck by owner Mike's son on a tractor. All in all sweet people, a stone cold groove in Floyd Virginia.