Our Friday night plans became a wash out but "candle power" does not a computer run. Friday Concerts in the Parks were supposed to start but Mother Nature had a different view of that plan. We were on our way to the park when the rains came. Reversing directions, we found the storm had knocked power out at home so any computer contact was a no-go for the entire evening. The rains did not, however, break the heat or humidity. Temps hovered at 80 degrees through the night and the humidity hung in there at about 90%. It was sticky! (Typical Maryland summer weather.)
We headed Northwest on Sunday to catch the last day of the Western Maryland Blues Festival in Hagerstown.
This festival opens on Thursday evening with a free concert in the plaza in the downtown business district featuring a popular local band.
A paid event on Friday evening (again downtown) features four better known regional groups and truly gets the party started. Saturday's paid event is also in the downtown business district and offers eight national, regional and a few local groups, a huge selection of food and beer vendors, and more, from noon until 10 p.m. At that point, a lot of the crowd simply disperses to the many local venues who also feature blues music throughout the weekend.
Sunday is billed as the Family Blues Picnic and takes place in the beautiful City Park (also in downtown Hagerstown) where they encourage folks to bring their chairs, blankets, picnic baskets and kids. Again, national, regional and local performers are featured. (This year there were 5 acts on for Sunday.) They also offer free children's music workshops and activities. Adult music workshops are usually also offered in the Museum of Fine Art which is on this property and is open on that day. Food vendors in the park offer some unique "festival" foods not always found at such events.
We particularly enjoyed the music of The Hard Swimmin' Fish and Flat Foot Sam and the Educated Fools on Sunday. Both have a hard-driving approach to the blues that appeals to our inner rock fan. I must say, the Fish have the only stand-up bass I've ever seen decorated with flames!
If you find yourselves in this end of the world, Hagerstown makes for a great week-end getaway. By day, there's shopping at both an outlet mall and loads of small unique shops in town, nearby history (Antietam is only a 20 minute drive), great restaurants and a lively club life at night featuring live entertainment most weekends. If that's not enough to keep you busy, the casino in Charlestown, West Virginia is less than 40 minutes away, too.
We needed to hurry home as we were expecting house guests for the night and The Big Guy also has a weekly Pinochle game at our house every Sunday night. We kept the activity rolling on Monday with a graduation ceremony which kept us out late again!
Boy, am I tired. I'm going to get some rest and get back to y'all soon!
2 comments:
It's picnic season once again. But there's always Mother Nature who can interfere with picnic plans. Love this post. Thanks for sharing.
traditional picnic baskets
Welcome back!
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