Last night was the first night of the 'Orange Blossom' weekend dance. A very fun time seeing a lot of friends from all over the country. I'm not sure anymore if it would even be possible for me to walk into a dance weekend anywhere in the states and not know at least one person. In the case of this weekend it would most likely be more than half of the estimated 180 people at the dance last night. It is one of the really nice things about taking up this kind of dancing.

   The first hour and a half was taken up with dancing to the band Wild Asparagus and the calling of George Marshall. It hit me during the 1st dance how easy it is to forget how truly wonderful this band is. They play so well and with such polish that you kind of forget that they are one of the top contra dance bands in the world. The calling by George is also a lot of fun, he often does easy to medium dances during the evening dances, but he does it so well that you tend to forget how hard it is for other callers at times. Anyway; it was a ton of fun.

    The calling for the 2nd half of the dance suffered some what and it made it that much more obvious how tight George and Wild Asparagus are. The 2nd band, The Sky Tones, were very good though, and we all made the best of the sometimes confusing calls. By the end of the night at midnight I was certainly good and tired.

    There is about an hour commute between where I am camped and where the dance is on the south edge of Orlando. I knew it was going to be a bit of a problem, but since there were other things I wanted to do over the week, that were more up in this area, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

    I spent most of the time before going to the dance yesterday hanging out around the trailer and reading a book. Also had to do some chores and clean up a few things.

    Will head over to the dance for this evening in a couple of hours. I usually don't do many of the daytime dances or workshops and nothing going on this afternoon sounded all that interesting.  There was one dance of difficult contras late this morning and that would of been fun. But it would of meant getting up to early after such a long night and then it would also mean finding something to do for the rest of the afternoon. 




For the past 3 days there have been a flock of wild Osceola turkey's hanging out near the front entrance road to the park. There have been up to 10 of them in the group and they seem to be pretty acclimated to having people drive by them on the way in and out of the park.