Topic: June(ish) Jam in Bentonville, Virginia
All, my friend Jeff Kelble is the Shenandoah Riverkeeper. He has a large event, usually in June, to raise money and membership. Shenandoah Riverkeeper is a subset of the Potomac Riverkeeper and is associated with the Riverkeepers Alliance. It's a terrific and effective organization that uses membership to show that the individual riverkeepers have a lot of grass-roots (read: potentially effective voting bloc) support. However, most of the work Jeff is doing is not political. He's doing a lot of raising awareness with politicians (sure, you can't avoid them), but also residential developers, residents, farmers, industry, etc. He is not afraid of using the courts and has done so effectively, but prefers the direct approach and has been very effective at it.
Now, I say that so that people will be comfortable attending his event to raise money and membership. The event is usually held on a Saturday, and because there is free-flowing beer and wine it is held at a campground. The event cost is usually about $40 for Saturday and to get an extra stay at the campground on Friday night is $8. That's roughly the same cost as renting a site at the campground for two days but it also gets you a huge meal made by award winning bar-be-que caterers, a lot of like-minded/cool people to hang out with, and extremely liberal enforcement of the rules. Plus the Shenandoah is a great river and I'll teach anyone to canoe who would like to come and give it a try. I'll also make my plastic armada available to keep down rental costs.
I don't have the particular weekend yet, but have sent a note to Jeff asking him to let me know as soon as possible because I know folks may need to put in their vacation requests soon.
The campground name is Lowwater Bridge Campground. It's in Bentonville, Virginia. You can Google map it with this address: 192 Panhandle Road
Bentonville, VA 22610.
Check it out. I know it's Virginia, but just barely and its only a few miles off a main road (but over a ridge, so you can't hear the noise at all). So folks from Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, western North Carolina, etc. all ought to take a look and see whether this is within your realm of feasible weekend trip.
I'll post the details of Jeff's event in this thread when I have them. So I may need to "bump" this a time or two between now and then.
- Zurf
Edit to start list of potential attendees (it's understood that plans change):
Zurf
Detman
Mekidsmom and Hubby
KAP54
Guitarpix
Dirty Ed
Normtheguitar (surprise UK visitor)
Roger (from a different site, he doesn't pick but he does have good taste in music and travels with a portable bar)
Herschel (from a different site, but he still picks a guitar)
Josh (from a different site, and he picks a guitar sometimes too)
Jets60
If it comes from the heart and you add a few beers... it'll be awesome! - Mekidsmom
When in doubt ... hats. - B.G. Dude