Finished up the Great Bear Groove weekend this afternoon.... it was so much fun... and now it's over. Bummer! The memories will live on however, at least until the next great dance.... which I guess will be about two weeks from now in Lexington, KY. Yeah!

   Only two hours of contras today, but it was hot and the dancing was fast so that was probably enough, even if you always seem to want more. The best part today was the collaboration between the two bands and a few additional people sitting in. At one point I counted 11 musicians on the stage, 4 fiddlers, a mandolin, electric guitar, sax, clarinet, drums, piano and cello. It was some great music. An odd thought hit me though as I was looking at the stage, 3 of the fiddlers up there were young ladies, somewhere in their late teens, maybe early 20's, and I couldn't help but wonder how many parents were out there somewhere shaking their heads when they think how hard they pushed to get there little girls to take up the violin and here they are jumping around on a stage playing an Irish Reel as if their strings were on fire.

   All good things come to an end however, or so I've heard. Once done with dancing I joined my friend for a final lunch overlooking the river. Very nice afternoon sitting outside watching the boats going in and out of the locks, and the sailboats out in the harbor.

   Once lunch was over it was a question of whether I should go back to the trailer and take a nap, which sounded like a really good idea, or take a short drive to the north to check out another light house. In this case the light house won out and I'm glad it did as the day was much to nice to be indoors no matter how good a nap would of felt. So it was off to the town of Selkirk on the Salmon River to check out the light house there. A nice drive through small little towns and past quick views of Lake Ontario to the North. The light house turned out to be another one of those cute boxes made out of laid up native stone. It is still being used as a navigation aid, but is no longer owned by the Coast Guard, but by the local preservation society. Still neat to look at and I did get some decent pictures which I'll post when there is a chance to sort them out a bit.

   Back at the trailer now and it is starting to cool down just a little bit as the sun is going down. Listening to this weeks broadcast of Prairie Home Companion on the computer. Love listening to it on the radio but it always seems to interfer with some activity that is going on. Just heard is Lake Woebegone segment and his tale of 'tick checking'. I now understand a referance a friend made last week to something I had posted on facebook. Will have to go take a little walk still, even if the legs and feet are still a bit stiff and sore from all the dancing. Not sure if it's going to be a night to read or time to watch a movie.... maybe both, or maybe a night to actually get to bed at a decent time. But what's the use of being retired if you can't stay up as long as you want?

    For now though here are some photo's of the dance venue I took this morning.
 

Here is a good view of some of the buildings out at Fallbrook Lodge, just south and west of the town of Oswego. It was evidently once an old Amish farmstead, it is now owned by the University there in Oswego and can be rented out by pretty much anyone. The 'Barn' we danced in is the building right behind this one.

 

The main door into the dance. 

Like most dance weekends there is always an hour of two of waltzing on Sunday morning. Here are a few of the people doing just that. Pretty nice dance space huh?

Out another double door on the other side was this roofed in space where snacks and water were located. There was also a beautiful view of a pond to the south. You'll see that in a sec.

An over all view of the barn. The short addition held the bathrooms. I'm not sure if there was anything on the ground floor of the actual barn. It was likely a usable space though.

 Here is the creek and pond you can see from the snack area. Lot's of new baby geese and lot's of frogs.

Here we have some of the musicians from this weekend. Starting on the right is Momma Kim on piano, on fiddle is Noah, on other fiddle from the group Firefly, is Cedar, on electric guitar is Andrew, on clarinet is Rebecca, also from Firefly and I am sad to say I don't know the name of the sax player, but he was awesome. Kim, Noah and Andrew make up the group Great Bear Trio. 

Another view of the band. Later on during the regular dance they were joined on stage by many more friends.

Here you can get a feel for just how tall this barn is inside. The floor is original and in pretty good shape for dancing considering. There are a couple rough spots down the hall a ways, and the whole floor seems to tilt slightly up the hall and toward the right side of the stage. That is where every one seemed to end up after every dance anyway.

A closer view of the ceiling. You can see that it isn't really a true post and beam building, but it does use some posts and beams for part of the structure. It was a very interesting structure and seems to work just fine.

These inverted triangular framing members are unique to me. Acting like a truss member they obviously hold up the beam at the top of the wall as well as the mid span roof beam. Why they cantilevered the roof joists the way they did is beyond me, unless it was strictly to provide a really high ceiling structure. I can't imagine anyone stacking anything that high though.

A final shot that shows how neat a space this was to dance in. All that was missing were a few bales of hay and the smell of manure. Will have to see how the schedule works out next year, but I could certainly see coming to this dance again.