Ojai, California

 This week Trish and I are in Ojai, California, for the 20th Ojai Storytelling Festival.  After having to cancel the festival last year, this year the lineup is quite stellar.  Here with me are Bil Lepp, Bill Harley, Kim Weitcamp, Rev. Robert Jones, Regi Carpenter, and Diane Macklin.  We are all having a wonderful time.

In normal years Thursday is a day when local school children come to the festival for a field trip.  Some of the schools are close enough for everyone to walk to the festival.  Because of COVID, this year the tellers split up and went out to the schools and told to the children there. 

Telling out in the schools.

I got to go with Regi Carpenter to Meiners Oaks Elementary School where we had two performances, one for the younger children and one for the older children.  Brian Bemel, the festival founder and director, was our host for these school shows.  We and the children had a wonderful time, but, everyone hopes that next year they will be back on the festival grounds.

Meteor Crater

 It was in the last Ice Age more than 50,000 years ago when a huge iron-nickel meteorite more than 150 feet wide impacted the earth in present day Arizona.  Traveling at more than 29,000 miles an hour the meteorite struck the earth with the fore of 10 megatons of TNT and was mostly disintegrated on impact.  Trish and I stopped to visit the crater as we drove through Arizona.

The meteor crater from the rim.

Originally more than a mile wide and 759 feet deep, the crater has eroded between fifty and a hundred feet at the rim and filled up more than 200 feet at the bottom.  It is now only about 559 feet deep.

Because of its similarity to the moon’s surface, the crater was used as a training ground by astronauts during the Apollo moos shot program.  It continues to play a role in NASA training projects.

Petrified Forest

 As we drive west through Arizona we always take a small detour to go on the loop through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest.  On this day there had been some recent rain, so, the Painted Desert portion of the loop was unusually colorful and bright.

Bright colors after rainfall.

We had to stop again and again as both the landscape and the coloring changed as we progressed along our way.  There is almost no one else around this time of year and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Every curve brings a different view.

Finally we arrived at the Petrified Forest end of the loop.  At the visitor center there are fossil remains of the creatures who lived here when the trees were living.  It was a place of moisture, ferns, and bogs;  hard to imaging as we stand in the desert of today.

That was one big tree!

We walked around and marveled at the vast landscape of petrified tree remains.  This was a giant forest with huge trees in its day.  The “wood” colors now are varied and beautiful; always worth a visit!

They go on and on.

At the Peabody

 Trish and I left Athens yesterday morning and started toward California.  We are in no real hurry so we stopped for the night at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, one of my favorite hotels.  Once checked in we had to visit the Peabody ducks as their fountain in the lobby.

The ducks come down each morning and spend the day here.

After our duck visit, we walked over to Beale Street and visited the Home of the Blues while being entertained by street musicians.  

From B.B. King to W.C. Handy.

Back at the hotel it was time for the ducks to make their five o’clock parade from the fountain on the red carpet to the elevator and back up to their penthouse for the night.  What fun to watch!

They know exactly where they are going.

After saying goodbye to the ducks, it was across the street to the famous Rendezvous Restaurant for Memphis ribs.  

Trish and I shared the whole rack!

Now it’s time for sleep.

Athens Storytelling Festival

 This year was to be the Fifteenth Athens Storytelling Festival.  Everything was scheduled and on go when the tent company announced that all their tents has gone of  the Gulf region for hurricane relief.  All the tent rental places in four states were contacted and they all had about the same story.  So, Athens is again virtual this year.

Instead of trying to record at home, Trish and I came on down to Athens on our way to California.  Then the plan was made for me to tell stories at a festival booster dinner.  It was a wonderful event for about a hundred and fifty people. They are all missing their festival!

Look forward now to this year’s Virtual Festival.

If you go to athensstorytellingfestival.com you can get signed up for the Virtual Festival.  It will begin to be broadcast November 12-13, but can viewed after that all the way through Thanksgiving.

Part of the Athens Festival charm is the inclusion of school children.  In normal years about 9,000 students come to the big tent of storytelling field trips.   This year, no field trips, but, the student tellers here have still been active.  

Working with Leah Oakley the students have chosen or written their stories.  On Wednesday evening I got to meet with those tellers and their families and tell them a story and give them presentation hints. Eight of the youth tellers told their stories in concert that night and then three of them were chosen to tell with me the following evening at the dinner event.  They were great.

We are all looking forward to next year when the Festival in Athens will be held the week of October 16-22.  It is one of our favorite events!

See Rock City!

 On our way to the Athens Storytelling Festival, Trish and I spent the night in Chattanooga.  Since we had only a short drive the following day, we decided to go up onto Lookout Mountain and visit Rock City.

See Rock City was the title of my fourth or fifth book published nearly thirty years ago.  The title is based on the story of a family trip to Florida that actually ended up here at Rock City.

Yes you can!

Garnet Carter and his wife, Frieda, opened Rock City, the gardens on their property, in 1932 right in the heart of the depression.  People with very little money could ride the street car out from Chattanooga and have a picnic or at least a pleasant day out in the giant rock gardens.

Trish entering Fat Man’s Squeeze.

Frieda Carter loved German fairytales and her touch on the gardens led to adding Fairyland Caverns.  The Cavern is filled with tableaux of such fairytales set into the walls of the underground walkway.

Entering the Caverns.

We found such a collection of fairytales depicted here plus a giant Mother Goose Village at the end with all our remembered nursery rhymes depicted.  These characters are all old German woodcarvings and many are nearly a hundred years old.

Little Red Riding Hood avoids the wolf!

If you have never been here and have a couple of free hours around Chattanooga, it is well worth the twenty dollar admission.

Jack Sprat and his wife.

At The State Fair

 It has been years since I have been to the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh.  Trish has never been, so, we started this trip with car service in Durham and an afternoon at the Fair.

I was expecting things to be as I remembered them, but, times and interests (and perhaps COVID) have changed the Fair.  There were so many more rides and food booths than ever in the past.  And, the rides were more TERRIBLE than ever…if you are inclined to motion sickness.  We stood back, watched, and listened to the screams!

Too high up for me!

The Fair was very short on animals.  In older times there were whole buildings filled with chickens, rabbits, goats, and other animals.  This year there seemed to be mostly cows and pigs with a scattering of goats and mixed poultry.  No exotics!  We missed that.

A tired mama with her new babies.

What we enjoyed most were the giant champion pumpkins and watermelons.  If we ever managed to grow something like this, we would never be able to lift it to bring it to the Fair.  We were really filled with admiration at calculating how many average pounds per day the giant pumpkins would have to gain.

Hundreds of pounds of pumpkins!

We finished our visit at the antique tractors while we watched others come staggering off their unwise ride choices.  That’s enough Fair for us for a while.

The old tractors carry many childhood memories.