Rick’s Rants and Raves

A few weeks ago, Anne was surfing (I think on Youtube, she’s not sure) and something in the intarwebs suggested that she might be interested in the “Scottish tribal drumming band” Albannach. She shared a video (like this one) with me and we were immediately hooked. We looked up their schedule, and as luck would have it, they would be in Ohio in only a couple of weeks.
The venue was something we’d never heard of before–the Piqua Heritage Festival. When we first saw the heritage festival web site there was no schedule of activities–it was just a couple of pictures and a listing of committees. By looking at the committee directory, with three different re-enactors committees, and a bunch of other interesting stuff, combined with the incredibly cheap $2 entrance fee (FREE PARKING!), decided we had little to lose. We were also intrigued by the designation as a “Top 100 in 2009” destination by the American Bus Association. Again, we’d never heard of the ABA, but it sounded like a fascinating organization, and we spent too much time one night perusing the 2009 listing. This is where we learned that the Piqua Heritage Festival draws 100,000 visitors each year. It astounded us that an event of that size only 90 minutes from home was completely unknown to us. We had to go find out.
Anne started looking for a way to make a camping weekend out of it. With all our activities this summer, we hadn’t been camping at all, and we didn’t have anything planned for the weekend weekend of the festival, Labor Day weekend. She quickly identified Kiser Lake State Park as state park closest to the event, and it seemed to have a significant proportion of non-electric camp sites for those of us who don’t want to go recreational parking.
About that time, we also decided to invite some friends, the Koontzes, since doing this kind of stuff is always more fun with a bit of a crowd. Eventually all the plans fell into place and Anne and I departed with our two kids plus two of the Koontzes’ on Friday evening. We scarfed some dinner on the way and got to our camp site just in time to set up the tents without the need of automobile headlights.
The original plan was to head to the festival on Saturday, but since the remaining Koontzes got out of town a bit later than expected, we decided to chill at the campground and lake side for the day.

Sunday, after breakfast and cleaning up, we departed for the festival. We wound our way though the beautiful downtown of Piqua (and fell in love with a firehouse turned into a home) and out to the festival grounds. When we tried to give them $12 for admission (two Koontzes and the four of us) we were informed that kids were free, and that we needed only pay $4. Holy Crap! Beer cost more than that at the Dublin Irish Festival!

By the time we met up with the remaining Kootzes, it was noon, and Albannach would be playing at 1PM. So we ventured out to find some grub and were pleasantly surprised to find very reasonably priced fare. My family ate for under $27 which is cheaper than we get out of most fast food. The food vendors were, with only a couple of exceptions, non-profit groups (like a Boy Scout troop) selling food as fund raisers. We ate in the tent where Albannach was to perform, and watched as the seats quickly filled in around us, leaving two or three rows of standing-room-only people just outside the tent. Given the fun we’ve had with other live acts, we were a bit disappointed that there were seats all the way up to the stage. It would have been fun to have been head banging with the band. Regardless, their performance did not disappoint–their energy was incredible, and the music as primal. Of course I took a number of pictures, but I think this one really captures the moment well. This guy was a constant blur of motion and was pouring everything he had into his performance.

After we left the Albannach performance, we wandered around a bit more, visiting a petting zoo, perusing a car show, glimpsing the canal boat and wandering through the massive re-enactor encampment. As we were going down one aisle of the encampment, Emily commented “I feel like we’re intruding” and I agreed with her. It was clearly meant for visitors to wander into, but it also had an intimate feeling because the period canvas tents were typically wide open to allow circulation in the warm afternoon sun. These folks were doing everything they could to play the heritage role they had signed up for during the entire festival. And I thought we were roughing it in our campsite!

We were at the festival for about 4.5 hours and experienced maybe 10% of what it had to offer. There were a lot of merchants we didn’t get to, tons of performers we didn’t see, and a rodeo that we only smelled from afar. I think it would be fun to go again, but I think camping just added a bit to the burden of the day. Had we been leaving from home, we probably could have been to the festival by 10AM and left at close. We’ve done much the same thing (with a slightly shorter drive) when we’ve done the Renaissance Fair.

We got back to camp, and had a leisurely dinner of pie-iron pizza sandwiches, and just hung out by the fire.

As the kids were going to bed, a bonehead two sites away started loading firewood into his pickup truck by throwing the pieces into the bed with a jolting boom that echoed off the valley walls. I walked down and requested “Hey, we’ve got kids going to sleep. Would you mind not throwing the wood in the truck. Its really loud.” The punk who’d been doing the throwing just looked at me dumbfounded, probably because of my complex request. An older man calls from the shadows “Quiet hour ain’t until 10″ to which I replied “I understand, and that’s why I’m politely requesting, as a courtesy.” Surprisingly, they finished the wood loading with barely a thud. An hour later, the stereo from the site next to ours was loud enough that I could easily hear the lyrics. I asked them if they could turn it down and they were apologetic and obliged by turning it off. I’ve decided that I want camp grounds that are well maintained but barely ever used, and with tons of space between me and the next camper (who’s just as courteous as I am), with water that’s close by, no unnecessary lights on the buildings, and beautiful scenery within a 10 minute walk. Is that too much to ask? Kiser lake turned out to be pretty heavy on the RV/Camper crowd and pretty busy, but that isn’t a surprise for a holiday weekend.

Just as the adults were heading to bed Sunday night, we started to feel drops of rain. The lightning woke us up around 5AM and the rain didn’t let up until we decided to scrap our dutch-oven breakfast and head toward Bob Evans. When we returned to camp, only the leaves were raining on us. We packed up our wet, muddy gear and headed home. Here are all of the pictures that were fit to post.