This bus was in the galax camp area...tons of interesting rigs. this festival is probably 75 years old and has lots of dedicated followers
They relax at Gaylax much like they do at centrailia
We med Denny and his wife at their onestop gas station between Blacksberg and Galax. He then connected with me at several venues as we danced together and hung together. He gave me a really old local newspaper he had collected with Alice Gerrard interviewing Tommy Jerral. This was a wonderful connection that went on for a month
This fellow is Ian from England. We met him and his partner Alice at clifftop they are here on holliday following the music as well but on bicycles. Great folks and she is a strong flattfoot dancer
This festival followed clifftop and was such an interesting contrast. They hold it at felts park right in galax and it has a county fair look and feel with a giant stadium and stage for preforming and a big food midway. There is competition going on continually in every catagory you can imagine. The big days you will see about 100 competitors in all of thes catagories...blue grass fiddle, oldtime fiddle, bluegrass banjo, oldtime banjo, singing, storytelling, dulcimer, autoharp, bluegrass guitar, flatfoot, bluegrass bands, oldtime bands, youth instrument catagories....on and on..noon to midnight for 5 days and a great variety of tunes. We watched for days, literally. We jammed very little and I am sure the more you attend the more you jam and les you watch. We parked a block away for $5 a night. The camping on sight is gone very early and more expensive.
The music the bands play is short and sweet and ripping. Each band gets one tune with a 2 minute limmit since there are about 100 bands each thats a lot of time. Tempo is way up and people just explode out of the crowd to dance like the lady in blue. This was a really uplifting festival for Martha and Me.
