We're back from Chatanooga

We’ve been back from the Chatanooga Dulcimer Festival for a little over a week. I promised Amy that I would take LOTS of pictures. I did take some, but we were so busy with the music portion of the trip that I don’t think my pictures are quite what you hoped for, Amy. Here’s the story. We got back from Portland around 11:30 P.M. and got to bed after midnight. Then the next morning we got up and drove until dinner time. Chatanooga, I have to tell you, is a remarkable city. I wish we had had time to do some of the many activities that city has to offer. Maybe another trip. The festival started on a Friday. We woke up with plenty of time to get ready – we thought! When Alan checked his cell phone for something, we discovered that we had crossed over into the Eastern time zone. We had an hour less time to get ready than we thought. Boy, did we ever hurry. One thing that we discovered at the festival is that the type of people that go to them seem to be very friendly and a lot of fun. That includes the teachers. We took classes all day Friday and then went to a concert that evening. I wish I had taken my camcorder to the concert so you could get an idea what it was like. I intended to do that at the concert Saturday night, but we were so worn out that we didn’t go. As a matter of fact we started home around midday. The concert was amazing though. There were a lot of very advanced players who, along with the teachers, could just get together and play long pieces without any real practice. There were hammered dulcimers, mountain dulcimers, banjos, guitars, bass fiddle, regular fiddle, drums, etc. It was great! By the way, two of the people there were the American grand champion dulcimer players. The young guy in the picture on the hammered dulcimer is one of them. We drove Saturday from around 1:00 until dinnertime. We stopped around the Kentucky Lake exit, ate, and checked into a motel so we could rest. We got into their pool and then crashed. That made for a better trip home. We attended church in Paducah, KY. They have a very nice, new building there. Then as we passed through a tiny town along the way, we had a tire blow out. Luckily we pulled into a parking lot where there were two men that helped us change it. They had equipment like they have in service stations which made the job easy. We really appreciated them! The pictures don’t show a very good idea of the festival, but I hope you enjoy them.