Fall Foliage and More

A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I took a brief road trip down to Waynesboro, VA to visit my mom and our pals there and to take in the glorious local Fall Foliage Festival. If you've been following this blog for more than a year, you know this is an annual pilgrimage for me, but Jeff hadn't been down to Virginia for this weekend for eleven years. It just never worked out, vacation-wise, for him. But this year--yea!

We started the festival off at the pancake breakfast, served in the social hall of Main Street Methodist Church. What memories that room has, as it was the venue for many a Junior Girls Choir practice. That's where I met Barb and Susan (aka, Chibby), who were to become my fast friends through the vicissitudes of junior high school, and beyond. And this year the pancake breakfast proved to be a reunion of sorts, with Susan and Laura--a fellow former Young Fool, now a psychologist--providing some of the entertainment.


That's Laura on the left, Susan on the right. They sang folky duets, including an old Girl Scout camp fave, "Walk, Shepherdess, Walk." I'd forgotten the song completely until they began singing it, and every word came back.

Barb met us there, and Susan's mom joined our merry band as well--we were the fun table.

That's my mom, of course, mugging for the camera.

After the breakfast, we headed down Main Street hill to the legendary art show.

There, at the fabulous Ed Brownlee booth, we met up with Beth and Cortney to check out the ceramics.



And check them out, we did:


Barb found a couple of kindred spirits and spirited them home with her.


Jeff and I each bought our own ceramic jar. Mine has insane bunnies on it, as you can see:


And Jeff's has a sad ghost.


It didn't take long for us to walk off our pancakes and sausage among the many booths of photography, ceramics, pottery, watercolors, glassware... and I really should have taken a picture of the guitar-playin' dude in the purple suit. He had flowing curly blond locks that he threw back in ecstasy as he strummed, his long teeth bared in the rictus of what can only be called orgasmic pleasure. Or pride. Or pain? But anyway, before we knew it, we were lining up for some fried rice.


Alas, we did not partake of the sacred funnel cake at this festival, but it was available had we wanted to. As always, Barb, this snap's for you:


Notice the shorts on the dame in the picture above? Everyone was dressed for summer. It was well into the 70s--maybe even 80 degrees. As I noted last year, that seemed way too warm for early October in the Shenandoah Valley. In fact, I have a picture of myself about 20 years ago at the FFF, and I'm wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and a thick corduroy jacket. And a hat! Times have changed, or at least, the climate has. Everyone was in shirtsleeves, including Beth, who also seems to have a spindle sticking out of her cranium.

In reality, it is the steeple of the aforementioned Main Street Methodist Church.

There were other, more troubling changes to the Big W... for example, I found this sign to be rather disconcerting for a returning ex-pat:


Yikes!

Well, the bulk of the fall foliage pictures (and there ARE more than the mere teaser at the top of this post) will have to wait for the next entry.

Time to get some shut-eye. I'll have more tomorrow or the next day...