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July 30th, 2016 was only the second time (I believe) that I’ve attended the Blue Skies Music Festival without camping. With alternative plans for the Sunday m’lady and I opted to just drive to Clarendon for the day, see what we could see and drive back home again once we’d seen it.
And we did just that. With no muss and no fuss over camping gear, food and all the regular weekend festival trappings we hopped in the car with our tickets and a guitar, hitting some fast food just before the Oompah exit on the old highway 7. We ended up scoring a pretty sweet parking spot too. They had changed things up that year and reserved a mowed field near the entrance for day-trippers like us. It was a joy to plunk my Mitsubishi Outlander into four-wheel drive and squeeze into a spot on a tiny mountain that had been left empty by the more fearful.
Of course we found some friends immediately upon arriving onsite and spent the first hour or so under a huge canopy setup in the trees. There was a table laden with plenty of food (and really good food at that) and a few guitars being strummed, but mostly it was just friendly, welcoming talk with earthy people.
We soon moved on the The Finger where we would normally have camped and where we knew most of our regular Blue Skies cohorts would be. And aside from a fleeting attempt at hitting up a workshop and a single, short stroll to the mainstage, sitting around in The Finger and soaking up Blue Skies vibes with my regular crew took up the rest of the day.
It wasn’t too long after the darkness really set in that we booked it out of there. Though of course having the whole weekend would have been great just spending a day on that piece of land was enough to charge up my soul. I tell you, the place is magic.
But you know, I gotta say it was pretty nice to sleep in my own bed that night.
Todd Man Out 