Hmmm...that raises in interesting discussion. Daniela and I are planning to come down Friday the 15th for the tent run on Saturday, stay that night, and head back to Grand Junction sometime Sunday and *ahem* work on Monday and maybe part of Tuesday before returning for good. But, if there are a few problems with non-festivarians fiddling around the camps then I'm wondering if we should leave only the tents and nothing inside them or, alternately, just plan on staying there the whole week!!!
Forgive me if I'm repeating info, if you are setting up and leaving., make sure that there is plenty of weight in the tent or do a really good staking job. And I mean really good. The wind can get fierce and I've seen a lot of tents get blown to OZ.
Now that I think of it, last year pre-fest, I saw an easy-up get lifted and crushed by a rogue wind. It was pretty spectacular.
A lot of you have heard this story, but for the newbies... it's pretty humorous. In 1995, I had a bachelorette party in Millcreek campground...5 bohemian women partying it up before I embarked on what would prove to be not the brightest thing I've ever done.
This was the year of James Taylor, Iris Dement, Ani DiFranco, Mary Chapin Carpenter, etc., and torrential downpours. [picture inclement weather smiley here]
We pitched our tent in a rather haphazard fashion and boogied in to town to "people watch" and begin the frivolity. Sometime later, with the intent of loading belongings into the tent, setting up sleeping bags, and donning warm clothing for the night, we returned to Millcreek... and found no tent. After walking around, inquiring with regard to the errant tent's whereabouts... someone pointed towards the fenceline, where our tent had made purchase; a short par 4 away from where it had started it's time in T-ride. We 3R'd our tent (retrieved, relocated, re-staked) and loaded in all of our belongings... being more than just a little tipsy, and obviously not wearing our "thinking caps", we decided it would be a good idea to collapse the tent and weight it with rocks. We did so... and tripped the light fantastic back in to town.
The rain started as a drizzle. We thought nothing of it. The rain steadily increased throughout the night... we still thought nothing of it. We played that bachelorette party game where the person who collected the most kisses from strange men wins... and continued to drink (now that I'm single again, I can tell THAT part of the story!
). Eventually, we began the trek back... too late to catch the shuttle. Being in good spirits and warmed from the inside out, we decided walking out to Millcreek and "singing in the rain" sounded like fun.
When we had finally slogged our way up to our campsite, we were soaked to the bone and some of the "spirit" had begun to wear off, leaving tired, wet women. Then we saw our tent... with all of our "warm dry clothes", our "warm dry sleeping bags", our food, etc., floating in about a foot of water, under the collapsed tent and rocks designed to keep things from blowing away.
The rain didn't stop until Sunday night, if I remember correctly... 5 women who NEVER managed to really dry off or warm up, slept in my Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot. The 5 women remained friends. The marriage didn't last. And four of the five women snort somewhat disgustedly when the 5th suggests a return trip to TBF.
Moral of the story: Get the name and camping location of at least one of the men you kiss when playing the "kissing game"... that way you have somewhere warm and dry to sleep.xoxo MG
Listening to:
Scotch and Chocolate - Nickel Creek
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