Headin' north to Delfest

Bill had an Air Force buddy, Jolly, we were hoping to see in Atlanta and we also had a Sacramento hash friend, MHS aka Perry,who was close by - BUT it was a 4 1/2 hour drive to Atlanta, in the wrong direction. At this point we'd covered a lot of miles and the thought of driving almost 5 hours out of our way just wasn't going to float; we were going to have to nix this visit and put it on the list for next time...sorry Jolly & Perry but maybe we'll see you in 2013!

I first met a lot of Bill's Academy friends at John Nestico's wedding in Charlotte, NC, back in the winter of 2006, I think it was. His good friend, Van, lived there at that time but has recently moved to the Berkshires where we are slowly headed. But, "Nestico" still lived there and it was the perfect stopping point on our way north to Maryland. He said he had a nice long driveway we could fit in with "no problem," but as we were driving in his neighborhood and seeing all the very long, but very steep, driveways we realized that we hadn't asked about either the levelness of said driveway or the tree issue! We made a quick phone call and Nestico came out and waved us down. Well, the driveway wasn't as steep as the others but it definitely wasn't flat...we hauled ourselves up there and got situated with no thought about how we'd get back down it!

John and Laura have a fabulous home and welcomed us with mint juleps in great little frozen pewter cups, so very southern! They are both very accomplished chefs and fed us an amazing meal and we got to know their kids a little bit better (high school to post college age). I crashed early and Bill stayed up to hang out with John. The next morning came too fast and there we were trying to back down that steep driveway, it took a couple of tries but we finally made it and were off to Richmond, VA to visit Bill's baby brother Scott.

It was just a few hours drive to Richmond where we parked for two nights at the Walmart just a few miles from Scott's house. I had met Scott 2 years ago at the Doane family reunion in Colorado Springs so it hadn't been that long since we had seen him. Both of Bill's brothers have played guitar since they were kids and Scott also plays many other instruments like the mandolin, fiddle, viola, steel guitar and others. He has tons of instruments hanging all over his home! When I mentioned. several weeks earlier, that we were going to Delfest he wanted to join us.

Scott has a great house which sports a fine pool table and the brothers got down to brass tacks pretty quickly. We spent a few days there doing laundry, hanging out with Scott and listening to him play some fine music. Now it was time to make the journey further north to get close to Delfest.

I found a cute little town called Berkeley Springs that boasted a hot springs state park - I thought my poor hubby who had been driving all month could use a little R&R to start off his birthday weekend. So I secretly booked him a 90-minute massage preceded by a good hot soak. We parked overnight at the Happy Hills Campground which was about 20 minutes away but over a very narrow, curvy road - nature's beauty surrounded us. It was a short drive into Delfest from here and provided full-hookups so we could charge our batteries and get our tanks ready for the 4 day festival.