Thornville, OH: All Good Music Festival

After waking up Thursday morning in the Walmart parking lot to a party of festival goers, we loaded up on ice and headed down the road to check in with our volunteer coordinators, CleanVibes, to get our wristbands for the four days of music and camping (and picking up trash- yay!)

We headed into the festival grounds to have our van searched before finding our camping spot. We were a bit nervous because you aren't supposed to bring in any glass at all and we had a bunch: peanut butter and jelly jars, olive oil, the 2 twelve packs of New Glarus, etc. after explaining to them that this was our house and we had no other choice, they waived us on our way!!!

At first we thought we'd camp in the van, but by golly gee willickers, IT WAS HOT in that sun and humidity and we were parked pretty close to the woods so we made a cool little camp with our hammocks and tent right by a little creek! We were getting lots of compliments and were pretty satisfied! We quickly made friends with our neighbors (who we exchanged info with and they might be coming to VT in October to hike and hang with us!) and we all had a few drinks and walked to the music which was like 5 million miles from our site... Jk, it was probably a mile tops. 

We had a blast the first night and got to see John Scofield Uberjam Band, Toubab Krewe, Papadosio, Lettuce, and Yonder Mountain String Band. We brought a handheld garden sprayer and had tons of fun spraying down the very appreciative crowd! We left the venue around 12:30 AM and missed Beats Antique, but we had to be responsible and get to bed so we could get up and work at 7:45! Yaya!!!

Sleeping in the hammocks was great and we got to our first shift early Friday morning! The clean vibes crew was pretty cool and although we wouldn't go as far as saying the job was 'fun' it certainly wasn't as bad as we thought. The crew started with the main stage area (which was always the worst part) and we'd all form a line and do sweeps like a vacuum cleaner until the entire venue was clean again. It was pretty satisfying to see the clean grounds! We ended up being part of a small team that got to clean the backstage area and then got set loose to roam the camp areas looking for trash and treasure.

We picked up trash/recycling till 12:30 and got back to the site just in time for a crazy thunderstorm to roll through. The trickling creek had become a mini rapids and we had some fun watching people try and cross it. There were a few spots for the daring to try and jump across and we ended up building a log bridge complete with a hand rope to help people up the impossibly muddy banks. We missed the Bright Light Social Hour (recommended by Barbie and Bobby) due to the weather but got to see Dark Star (acoustic!) Leftover Salmon and Primus late night. Due to the weather we slept in the Zinger and again got to work on time!

 

Saturday was a turning point for All Good  as Friday's storm had really been a game changer bringing the cooler weather but more rain was in the forecast. It's never a festival without a good downpour (with the rare exception of High Sierra) but All Good ended up getting pretty wet. We got rained on twice while picking up trash and our campsite got soaked. When we returned from work we were dismayed and saddened to discover one of our hammocks had been stolen. Luckily everything else was in place, even our other hammock... The rain came in waves the rest of the day, alternating between hot and humid sun and outright downpours. We spent the afternoon sleeping in the van, resting up for the main event of the night, Furthur, with fingers crossed that the rain would be over by then.

The rain did hold off and it ended up being an awesome show! We stayed up later than normal but made it through our final work shift on Sunday without being too tired. The music scene on Sunday was pretty casual (as the last day of a festival tends to be) and we dozed through most of it on our blanket.

Since we had no where in particular to be immediately following the music we hung out at camp and got a good night's sleep in the van. We packed up Monday morning before the next rain storm rolled through (welcome back East huh!?) and made a 4 hr drive to a hotel somewhere in Pennsylvania. We took real showers, watched some TV and treated ourselves to some Chinese food. We still had a bunch of food leftover from our big day of food prep at the lake cabin and we're still enjoying it! Talk about eating cheaply!  We're now en route to Horsham, PA to reunite with Molly and Spanny who we saw separately way back in the beginning of our trip. This time we'll all be together! Woohoo!