We just returned from a weekend at Four Quarter Farm, as regular readers of this blog have already known, so I won’t keep re-linking the page.   Suffice it to say it was, by far, the best festival experience we had ever attended.  Seriously.

For this post, I’ll stick to the mundane summary.  Further details and some pictures to follow once I get a bit more free time to dump the camera and blur out any necessary faces and such (we had permission to take photos of the group events, but some people didn’t want their faces on public forums, so I need to edit images slightly before uploading).

We left the house on Friday morning just before 4am and drove to pick up our friend Nettle at the Harrisburg train station, arriving just after 9am.  Made it to 4QF a little bit before noon, and setup the camp, tend and kitchen pavilion.

Friday, we mostly just hung around touring the place, swimming in the swimming hole (awesome!), grilling hot dogs for lunch, and making more finalized plans for what things to do on Saturday, then a steak feast from the grill for dinner.  The area we camped had a giant swing setup between two trees, that was continually occupied by kids or families, and hte shower house was a very short walk to the opposite side of the little circle we camped at.  All very nice and local, with the main area of merchants and stone circle a short climb uphill to those areas.

Friday night, we slept the deep sleep of the relaxed and over-tired in our tent.  :)

Saturday, we shopped a bit, met some new friends (Sprogling particularly enjoyed meeting Yellow Bear, who was an awesome grinning 2yr old still learning to talk, and had a totally Kodak-moment with the two of them holding hands and running off to some adventure while his mother and I chatted our introductions) and just enjoyed the festivities.

My wife and our friend Nettle went to do their own things for Saturday afternoon while the kid and I did some kids workshops and jsut wandered around swimming/playing.  We both painted a dragon scale for the evening’s Chinese “Dream Dragon”, and generally hung out at the poi/hula-hoop stand for about two hours playing with the toys and other kids who accumulated in that field.

Later, I attended one of the workshops with Nettle, and then we all ate dinner, the two women went and did some more stuff together, and then it was evening.    The kid and I wandered up to the top of the hill for the evening festivities, which included all the kids helping carry the Dream Dragon, or large puppets or decorated poles for a parade.

Following the parade was fireworks (Literally! the last group of the parade was slinging firecrackers and sparklers) which were pretty nice.  I’ve seen some small-town displays that didn’t quite get as impressive as these, which was a nice surprise.

Then, after the fireworks, we met up with “mom” again and the kid went back to the tent very sleepy and content.

Darkness brought another round of awesome drumming from the fire circle, which I joined until about 4am the next morning.  Whoo!

Sunday, we basically woke up, ate breakfast, and started the process of breaking camp.   There was much crying from numerous kids across camp, whcih I suppose is a good sign that things were fun for them too.

We left around 2-ish, bought 10 bottles of wine from the local on-site vintner, and dropped our friend back at the train station, then turned north for home.   We arrived back to Everthorn Farm around 10:30 pm.    Long weekend, but totally worth it.

So, more deeply pondering posts will be made.  There was a lot to integrate from this weekend.  but they will have to wait until I get a bit more sleep, and job-work lets me collect my thoughts.  :)

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