Guitar – Page 4 – The Destinators

Land Between the Lakes

It was time for a different kind of adventure for us – chill. In the past month alone, we’d been awed and inspired by the beauty of Roosevelt, Badlands and Rocky Mountain National Parks as well as the Black Hills of SD and high peaks area of CO. We’re still giggling about our serendipitous and crazy visits to Carhenge and The City Museum in St Louis. We thoroughly enjoyed visits with old and new friends and family in SD, CO and MO. We were thrilled to join two jam sessions in CO. And we were acutely aware that a major, 3-day jam in Memphis was just 2 weeks away. We needed to take a short break from adventuring and take some practice time.

Drawing a line on the (virtual) map from St Louis to Nashville, where we planned to visit Doug’s cousins, we saw a major splotch of green – the Land Between the Lakes (LBL) National Recreation Area. Sounds nice. And the old man (Doug) gets a senior discount! We laid a course.

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Xscapers SoCo Convergence

The Xscapers SoCo Convergence was amazing!

2016-09-20_09-48-09 — Full moon campfire

First, a little background… Continue reading “Xscapers SoCo Convergence”

Colorado Drive-Thru Blues Jam

Since we were coming through the Boulder/Denver area, I got in touch with a couple of my Blues Guitar Unleashed friends who live nearby. Sue and I had a great afternoon with Chris and Frank. Chris generously hosted us all, providing both lunch and jam space. We played through a bunch of blues standards, switched around on various instruments, and tried a few things out in preparation for “The Show” (that’s my name for it), the annual BGU Live gathering which we will all be attending in Memphis in early October.

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Is all my life really a circle?

Yes! In fact, Harry Chapin pretty much nailed it right there. Here’s what we’re talking about:

A day or two ago, Rod & Tanya were at their desks at home in Egan, SD reading a new post on Technomadia about their friends Chris & Cherie’s stay in our driveway back home in Vermont. At that very moment outside in Rod and Tanya’s driveway were The Destinators (aka Doug & Sue), enjoying a cup of coffee in their rig, catching up on the news and a few select blogs – and reading the same Technomadia post. See what I mean?

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Bingeing on the Blues

Doug is a member of the Blues Guitar Unleashed (BGU) forum, an on-line guitar community dedicated to learning blues guitar. Periodically, BGU members host (and we attend) live events in different places around the country, which is where we met our friends Tom and Laurel. For the past few days, they’ve been our hosts and fun finders extraordinaire and Tom our lead guitar for an incredible blues binge.

As with any BGU meet-up, warm greetings were quickly followed by instruments coming out and an impromptu jam session, this one in Tom’s music room on Friday evening. Tom and Doug traded off on rhythm and lead guitar and bass, while I got to accompany them on the RV drum kit ’til way past our bedtimes. There’s no better way to start a blues binge!

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RV Travel Perk

In Clarkston, Michigan, west of Detroit, we stumbled onto the best way to arrive at a Dead concert:

As an aside, the Westies got to park together, too, though they were relegated to one of the “regular” lots:

The venue was cool – DTE Energy Theater – if you imagine the lawn at Tanglewood tipped up 20 or 30 degrees (so you can see the stage! From The Lawn!) it’s kind of like that. Also, Sugarbush friends, there’s a ski area right outside:

Ski area (that’s the top and the bottom)

We had inside seats, though, and the concert was AMAZING! Continue reading “RV Travel Perk”

Three weeks in

We’re now through the third of our scheduled stops and our third week on the road.

From Lewiston, ME we headed over to West Gardiner for a drive-by jam session with my friend Wilbur (aka “Cowboy”) from Blues Guitar Unleashed. This was the inaugural music stop on the trip and the first field test of the suitcase drum kit. We’re calling it an unmitigated success. Wilbur and Naomi are also RV’ers, so we had a lot of (non-musical) notes to compare, as well. We all had a great time, and Sue and I very much enjoyed getting to know Naomi and Wilbur in a closer and quieter setting than the big jam sessions where we’ve met before.

We didn’t get any photos (still working on developing effective travel-blogging routines and habits!), but Wilbur got a couple of us: