Gettysburg

Rainy and cold here. Expecting snow showers tonight. Definitely missing Sarasota!

The Green Flash

On Siesta Key.  Seeing the 'Green Flash' is a first for me.  Pretty exciting!  And that's it for this chapter. Flying back to Annapolis tomorrow.

Early morning on Little Sarasota Bay

                 Another beautiful day on Siesta Key, and another Great Blue Heron up bright and early.

Siesta Key

A Great Blue Heron out for a morning walk.  We are safely in Sarasota.  ;-))

Atlanta to Dunedin, FL

I left Atlanta Sunday morning and had a long but uneventful drive to the White Sulphur Springs, Florida, where I spent two delightful days at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center.  While Stephen Foster never set foot in Florida, his song "Old Folks at Home" is the Florida State Song.  The Folk Culture Center (also a state park) is built right on the the Suwannee River and may be one of the most tranquil setting I have ever experienced.

The Center has a wonderful Carillon that plays Stephen Foster songs every few minutes and a lovely museum with a collection of old pianos and wonderful dioramas depicting various songs he composed. It also has a large array of craft buildings where different folk crafts are demonstrated daily.  There are monthly folk festivals, as well as a large folk music festival every May.

Next it was on to Dunedin and Clearwater Beach where I'm visiting a colleague of almost 40 years before going on to the destination for this trip, Sarasota, on Friday.  The weather is beautiful, mid 70's and sunny. To borrow a quote from a t-short company "Life is good".

Greetings from Clearwater Beach

The Bell Tower/Carrillon at the Stephen  Foster Folk Culture Center

The famed Suwannee River.  It's pretty low now, as it's fed by the the Okeefenokee, which hasn't had sufficient flooding to raise the water level    

One of the wonderful dioramas at the Stephen Foster Museum

Elli says it was a bit chilly and actually snowed in Annapolis!

Asheville to Atlanta, and the John C. Campbell Folk School

The fleece for our spinning class came from a Carriedale sheep

 A taste of Asheville makes me want to return for more.  The beautiful arts and crafts, the scrumptious southern food, and the colorful mountain scenery, all wonderful.  And a little hippie element added a bit of flavor too.  

And then it was off to Brasstown and the Campbell Folk School.  It had been 11 years since I'd been here, and I fell in love with it all over again.  This time I came to learn spinning, and after struggling the first two days to get the feel and rhythm of  the spinning wheel, I finally started to spin some wool that looked like spun wool, instead of an uneven semi-blobby, semi-stringy mass.  It's not as easy as it looks!  This visit to the Folk School I made sure to take some time to enjoy the scenery and to stop in at other classes to see what they were carving, turning, writing, painting, strumming,..

Before I knew it, the week was over and it was time to head for Atlanta.  Blue Ridge and Ellijay were sweet mountain towns to explore on the way down, and I tucked in for the night at an Embassy Suites using a 20-yr old chit for a complimentary weekend stay.

Today included the CNN Studio and World of Coca Cola tours.  I enjoyed the CNN tour, very informative.  The Coca Cola tour included a tasting room where you could sample all 60 Coca Cola products from around the world. It made me wonder why we make our soft drinks so sweet.  No wonder I seldom drink them!

Oh Boy, finally at the Folk School 

Evening on the porch off the Keith House 

Starting to get the hang of it

A skein of spun wool (yippee!)

On the Road to Florida - October 2011 - Annapolis to Asheville

Another road trip, here we go.   This one is to move VanGo down to Sarasota, Florida before the cold weather comes to Annapolis.  It started with a Sister on the Fly event in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia.  44 Sisters brought their classic trailers to a campgound just outside Floyd.  Floyd is an integral part of the Crooked Road, a musical heritage trail in southwestern Virginia.  Smithsonian Magazine wrote a wonderful article about it in the fall of 2011.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/A-Musical-Tour-Along-the-Crooked-Road.html

The Sisters event was wonderful, with great food and great mountain music, both at the campground and at the Floyd Country Store Friday night jam session.  Many of these Sisters are very talented, very artistic, and very clever.  Husbands are typically not allowed on Sister trips, but Thursday was an exception, where two hubbies were allowed to cook us the best brisket some of us (moi included) have ever had!    

Today VanGo departed for Brasstown, NC, and the John C Campbell Folk School where I've enrolled in a  five-day class in spinning.  The journey included a stop at Keaton's Barbecue in near Statesville, NC (reputed to be the best barbecue in the country by "Roadfood" authors Jane and Michael Stern) and Asheville, NC, where the first stop was the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway (home of the Southern Highland Craft Guild).  It was a beautiful day and I'm sated, with wonderful local arts and wonderful local food.

A few Sisters checking out the Roadtrek

A little before dinner music

The Floyd Country Store Friday night Jam Session

Gail and one of the locals (a great dancer!) 

Keaton's Barbecue outside Statesville (yummy!)

One of the quilts on display at the Folk Art Center in Asheville