I took Friday afternoon [May 4th] off and we left the city at about 2:00PM. We needed to travel with two vehicles as the girls brought their menagerie with them. We were travelling with two rabbits, two skinny pigs [hairless guinea pigs] and two dogs, plus all the paraphernalia of cages, bedding, food, etc. My Mom also came along with us, so there were six of us. After our stop in Stettler to photograph the old sign, we continued on to Drumheller, and eventually made it down to East Coulee by about 6:00PM. Our trailer had been in storage there in our building, since last fall. I forget that I had left it rather dirty and disorganized when I put it away at the end of the season. So we needed to sweep things out and plug in, so that we could unpack and start the fridges. By the time we got everyone settled down and everything put away, it was after 7:00PM. The Springfest music festival had started that night at 6:00 and was going until about 10:00. By this time we decided it was too late to bother buying any tickets for the evening. My brother-in-law Shawn and his girlfriend Donna showed up later that evening and we just visited for a while before eventually turning in for the night.
The next morning we were up moderately early and had a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. We realized that we forgot our coffee maker which had been taken out of the trailer in the fall. We borrowed the one in the shop, and jump started the morning.
The music festival got going at noon and we were over there relatively soon after it started. We saw Lothar the Magician, and then a whole bunch of the bands. We saw Suit Jacket Society, Little Bow and the Bluesland Horn Band before we took a bit of a break. Unfortunately we missed Black Cherry Perry's Mississippi Medicine Show, which I'm told was one of the highlights of the festival. Later we saw Glen Brown and Spur Crazy, The Barrel Dogs, The James Band, Give Em Hell Boys and the Beautiful Scars. There were others that we missed and I kind of wanted to check out, but there is just too much to absorb in one day and you sort of have to pick and choose. We all really enjoyed the event again this year and will be back again. I'm not sure how long this has been going on now... I think it is about 20 years, and I've been in attendance at the last four of five of them.
Frank and Chris came out in the afternoon and joined us. Frank had just picked up his new Harley Davidson in Calgary that morning and rode it out to East Coulee. They stayed in their trailer at the shop as well, so when the music stopped we all sat around and visited into the wee hours. I think it was about 2:00AM before I finally crawled into the trailer and went to sleep.
The girls saw a couple of the bands but the two young ones mostly hung out at the building with their pets, and watched movies on their electronics. Hailey was a little more ambitious and was with us to see a number of the bands. Mom seemed to enjoy herself and although she avoided some of the louder, heavier stuff, she saw many of the acts as well. This is only the second time that Margarit made it out to the festival. In the past it was often in conflict with dance competitions and recitals. But this year the girls opted out of dance, so they were all able to join the gang at the festival.
I had my digital camera with me the entire time and took photographs of all of the bands that we saw. This type of subject matter is not suited to large format film photography, so the big camera stayed in the shop.
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