Music – The Destinators

Stan Rogers Folk Festival: Stanfest 2026

A young folk artist whose musicianship and songwriting skills had gained widespread recognition across Canada by the early 1980s, Stan Rogers was well known and celebrated for his traditional-sounding songs of Atlantic Canada, the Great Lakes and the prairies. Returning home from a festival in Texas in 1983, Stan lost his life in an airplane fire at the age of 33.

About a dozen years later a group of folks got together in Canso, a small and remote fishing town on the south coast of Nova Scotia, where they put on a folk music festival to honor Stan and his music. Fans came, the festival was successful, and it has become an annual event which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

The rest of Cape Breton, part 1 – Isle Madame and Saint Peter’s

After landing in Sydney, NS from Newfoundland in 2023, we visited the northwestern section of Cape Breton that features Cape Breton National Park and the Cabot trail. While there, we visited most of the attractions and hike just about every trail. That’s only about half of Cape Breton. Here’s the other half…

The Edge of Fundy, part 1 – Minas Basin

We noticed a large clump of e-pushpins surrounding the easternmost portion of the Bay of Fundy. Ha! We noticed two themes… about half of the places are related to the Bay of Fundy’s extraordinary tides, and the other half deal with the significant history of Acadians before and after Le Grand Dérangement/ Deportation of 1755. I think we can visit them all! Shall we? Allons-y!

Nova Scotia’s Atlantic Shore

So about those e-pushpins – they continue to get added even as we’re traveling. I like chatting up locals and often get comments like: you gotta visit XYZ!! And then there’re the e-pushpins that add themselves like: there’s something wrong with the brakes on our 6-ton RV – where’s the nearest brake service!? Each addition often spawns a few more (why waste a visit to an unexpected town?) and so the pushpin count continues to grow.

Return to The Compound, Los Lunas, NM

In 2014, before this blog began, even before RV travel entered our lives, Sue and I traveled to a blues jam near Augusta, ME. This event was run by a high school teacher and tennis coach with a serious guitar habit who calls himself “Cowboy” in the BGU forum, though his real name is Wilbur. At Wilbur’s jam, we met a whole bunch of cool people from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forum, including one who had chosen “sloslunas” for his forum name, likely because his first name is Steve, which starts with “S,” and he lives in Los Lunas, NM.

But that was my first jam of any kind, my first time playing my guitar in public, the first time I ever plugged into an amp and played at stage volume – a whole bunch of firsts. At one point Steve came to me, acting real serious, and then he told me I was a player (“You’re a player, man!”). I found that to be incredibly encouraging, uplifting and enabling. We became friends. When Sue and I started all our traveling, we stopped in to see Steve and Hy in Los Lunas. That was in April 2017, way too long ago. Though we’ve tried a few times to get there again, each of those efforts was thwarted – until this year!*

Bakersfield, CA

Mutual friends introduced us. “You should meet this couple we met! They both play music and travel in an RV with an insane amount of music gear. You’d love them!” So we first got together with Rod and Tanya at their home in Egan SD in 2016, and love them we did! That was our first year out on the road and we learned so much from them about RVing, traveling with music gear, and making music. Mentors! We were humbled that these pro musicians, traveling as RVDreamTour, invited us to jam with them. We were fortunate to cross paths again later that year, in one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever played music in, and once again in 2019.

When we first met, Rod and Tanya were able to work remotely while traveling for months at a time. Although they still do that, their latest work situation requires them to occasionally be on site at several places in the west. They still spend summers in Egan, but winters now in St David, AZ which is nearer to the work sites. We checked in from Palm Springs, when we were about to be heading towards St David and – surprise! – they were in Bakersfield, CA. Well, that’s not very far from Palm Springs, is it? Set a course!

San Diego, CA

I’ve “known” Dennard from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forums since he first lit up the stage at the BGU Live jam at Lake Arrowhead, CA in 2018. I wasn’t at that event, but his original songs and charismatic stage presence brought him immediate fame within our online community. This man is a player!

Sue and I first crossed paths with Dennard in person at the 2023 BGU regional jam in Grand Rapids, and again in 2024 in Albuquerque. We were looking forward to jamming a few tunes with Dennard again earlier this month in Parker, but, alas, at the last minute he could not attend due to a family visit. We’d also been looking forward to meeting up with Dennard here in SoCal around this time one year ago, and that was one of the visits confounded by our sudden change of plans. Not this time!

BGU/DEN: Parker, CO

Blues Guitar Unleashed regional jams have been a regular enough feature in this blog that I’m not going to open this post with another explanation of what they are (although if you need that, see my posts from last year or the year before that). Beginning last December my friend and fellow musician Bob (aka BobbyUT) has been making and tweaking all the necessary arrangements for our gang of blues brothers and sisters to get together this fall in his hometown of Parker, Colorado, just south of Denver, for 4-1/2 days of music and mayhem. That event took place last week, and history was made. Again.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO

On my cross-country bike trip in 1983, I stopped in Morrison, CO. A local suggested I check out the Red Rocks Amphitheatre – a natural outdoor theatre that had been enhanced and turned into a performance venue. Although there was no show there that day/evening, it sounded like it might be a cool place to see, so I biked up to the entrance. I was in awe of this performance space tucked in between giant red rocks, surrounded by such stunning views! I spent the rest of the day hiking in and around the theatre.

Had there been a show, it would likely not have fit into my bike-bum’s budget. Sigh. Coming back someday to see a show was one of the first official items on my shiny new bucket list. It only took me 42 years to check it off!

Parker, CO

As mentioned in Doug’s post, the uncertainty of how long we’d be waiting for RV repair was unnerving. Sitting day after day in a dimly lit hotel room with only a bed and 2 chairs at the Quality Inn behind the Mercedes repair center would get old fast. And although we were surrounded by shopping malls with a huge choice of chain restaurants, the prospect of visiting those twice a day for more than a couple of days had limited appeal. We needed a change of attitude, a plan B. After all, people fly into Denver for vacation all the time without RVs. What do they do? What could we do without our RV?