"Come Hear Uncle John's Band" part 1

The whole family kicked off our music festival season with the Clearwater Festival in Croton-On-Hudson, New York this past weekend. This was my second trip to the festival (you can read about my first adventure here) but my first with the entire family.

Overall the music was weak, with the highlights being my new favorite "Black 47" and the "Indigo Girls" (of course). An honorable mention goes to "The Bacon Brothers", but in all fairness, I did doze off during their set. We set up camp under the willow tree far in the back, and it was just soooo comfortable.

The overall festival was a lot of fun. To start at the beginning, we camped at Harriman Park, my dad, Brian (Brother-in-Law), and I leaving Friday to set up camp. My mom and sister joined us on Saturday morning.

That Saturday morning, as I was coming back to camp after taking a shower, a deer was in our campsite! It made no move to scamper away as I approached. It kept looking at me while it searched out picnic table for food. Finding none, it moved to a neighboring site and was hand fed by the occupants. I got my camera and took the pictures below:


Deer in neighbor's campsite
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Deer in our campsite
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Deer (I have named him Arzt)
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After that, we headed out to Croton Point Park and set up our blanket under "The Willow"


"The Willow"
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The first day was spent meandering around the park, checking out the vendors, walking through the renewable energy ten, and listening to music. The lineup for Saturday really had no one exciting emerge. I liked a lot of what I heard, but I didn't want to rush out to buy a CD or anything. Buy the end of day one, we were only sticking around to see a potential Pete Seeger sighting. Pete Seeger is a hero to my parents and he is affiliated with this festival and often will sit in on a song or two with different performers. The second to last act was Mike Seeger, so we figured the possibility was high that Pete would make an appearance during Mike Seeger's set.

We were right, and happy to see him pick his banjo for two songs, we packed it in and headed to the only place that makes sense when you are camping with the pickiest eaters on the face of the planet: The Mall. To quote Joliet Jake Blues, "This mall's got everything", including a "Macaroni Grill" which meats all of our dietary constrictions.

We then headed back to camp and were pretty much asleep when our heads hit the pillows.

To be continued....