Quite a Weekend

When I was making our plans for this leg of the journey I found out that Adler would be competing at the WGI World Winds Championships in Dayton and Northern Kentucky University Arenas this weekend. So I booked us into Stonelick State Park just east of Cincinnati and between the two venues.

It’s a pretty campground on a little lake…

but this weekend it was filled with campers with kids and dogs.

Yesterday morning Matey and I took a long walk through the woods.

I was happy to find May Apples,

red Trillium,

and Dogwood in bloom.

We then left Matey in the trailer and drove to the Cincinnati airport to pick up Jamie and Sean. We had lunch

at Grassroots and Vine in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.

We ate outside despite the chill because there was a baby shower taking up most of the tables inside and the din made it impossible to have a conversation. The food was great, though. After lunch we drove to watch Adler in the preliminary competition (where I forgot to take pictures) then dropped Jamie and Sean at their hotel.

Matey and I had a late walk.

We took another long walk along the lake this morning, because he was getting left behind again.

This time we picked up Jamie and Sean and drove to Dayton to watch the finals. We stayed for the awards. Here’s all the bands that made finals. There were scholastic and independent entries in three levels, A Class, Open Class and World Class. Adler’s band was entered in the highest class, the World Class.

They are the double column behind the Arkansas flag. They came in fifth, not bad since they were probably the smallest school competing in that class. I think they were pretty happy with their performance and their score.

This is the celebration after the awards. Obviously all the band members were excited. It was a fun day, but another long one. After awards we got to see Adler for about a minute and then he got on the bus back to Hot Springs and we took Jamie and Sean to the Dayton airport for their flight home.

When we got back to camp and I took poor Matey out for a walk, I was happy to see that most of the other campers had left. We have two more days here and will enjoy the peace and quiet.