Memorial Day Weekend - 2011

I got home from camp about 10 a.m. on Friday to help Rick get the new camper hooked up to his truck, backed down our driveway, and packed up.  I anticipated the hooking and the backing part to be more difficult than it turned out to be.  It all went pretty smoothly and we got it all packed up and drove it out to Glen and Holly Bowman's in West Gardiner for their annual Memorial Day Weekend picking party.  No hired bands - just 50 or so campers, tents, etc., and lots of people hanging out and playing music all weekend, predominantly, though not exclusively, bluegrass music.  We had dinner plans with Lance and Regina - (Lance is new faculty at UMF) so our plans were to just set the camper up on the site with the rest of the band and head back home to get ready for dinner.  The weather started out drizzly but by the time we got to the site it was very hot, sunny, and humid.  

We got it set up and everything was go except the water didn't work.  There was water there, the pump was running, but the water just drizzled out of the faucets, at best.  We messed with it with help from Woody for a while without great results.  We knew if anyone could figure out what the problem was it would be this crew as they all have a great deal of experience with campers but we figured we'd bring back enough water for the weekend in case we couldn't figure it out.

We were hungry by then so decided to make a short stop at The Fat Toad to visit with Robert and have some lunch.  We were out of there within an hour, made a stop at The Evil Empire to get a new camp table (Rick stole last year's camp table for his music equipment in the new room) and some other things.  Got home in time to take a short snooze and showers and headed out to Hallowell about 5:30.

We met up with Regina and Lance at The Liberal Cup and had good conversation and a nice meal.  It was the first time I'd met either of them and it was fun getting to know them.  They were in town to find a home before heading back to Illinois on Monday.  Apparently they found a nice house on a small pond in Weld that they took a year's lease on.

After dinner we took them on a tour of Hallowell, walking down to the river, pointing out all the pubs along the way, showed them the interesting artistic display of junk down beyond The Wharf, stopped into The Wharf to briefly check out the early show, then walked back to Hoxter's and listened to Pat Pepin's band for a couple of beers.  We then went back to The Wharf for the later show with Stevie Jones' Dirigo Band and some more conversation.  We parted about 11 p.m.  I think they quite enjoyed the night out, as did we.

We were back at the campsite Saturday about noon and after a bit of tinkering, Richard discovered a plugged filter in the water line, removed it, and our water was working fine.  He's a genius!  They picked most of the afternoon and evening with lots of people stopping by, many with instruments, many just to listen.  We slept well in the camper and repeated the events on Sunday, making a nice dinner of spaghetti and Italian sausage and a bottle of Clos du Bois.  Somehow managed to stay up until about 3 a.m., slept well again, woke up Monday morning and headed back home.  Again, we were worried about having to back the camper back into its spot off the driveway but it went in there much slicker than anticipated.  Even the dumping of the poo into our septic system wasn't nearly as gross as we'd expected.  All in a day's work.

Rick mowed the lawn and then we watched Black Swan and the latest episodes of Treme and Game of Thrones we'd taped while away, and I ran a load of bisque in the kiln.  

Chris and Sara got the keys to their new apartment Tuesday afternoon so we took a truck load of their things up for them Tuesday night.  A nice college student's apartment - a little dingy, but spacious and a great location just a quarter mile from campus.