Bluegrass and Shakespeare... or not!

One Saturday morning at the end of August, we headed across the border with Angharad for a blissful overnight trip to Whidbey Island.  The plan for Saturday included going to a bluegrass festival at the Meerkirk Gardens, and then seeing a free outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Lunch at Calico Cupboard in Mt Vernon

Here are some photos we took at the peaceful Meerkirk Gardens as we meandered our way towards the distant strains of bluegrass music...

Once we reached the music, we realised that "festival" may have been a bit of an overstatement.  There were three bands playing throughout the day, one at a time.... and no queues for the site's three port-a-loos!  Anyway, it was a pleasant setting and we listened to most of the second band's set before deciding it was time to hit the road again if we wanted to have time to purchase the makings of a picnic dinner before the Shakespeare performance.

The band and the crowd

18 week photo

After getting ourselves picnic-ready, we headed to the outdoor performance venue, arriving only to find cardboard signs and sympathetic volunteers advising us that the evening's performance was already full. They'd had hundreds more people show up than they expected and were now turning carloads more away. Even our sob story of driving all the way from Canada was to no avail!

Anyway, we drove to a nearby beach - the same one we had eaten at with Kelly, Janae and Etta a month earlier - and enjoyed our picnic dinner there instead, watching cruise ships pass by and happy dogs frolic on the sand.

That night we stayed at a Dutch-themed motel in Oak Harbor, and on Sunday morning we had a hearty breakfast at a typical American diner down the road.

Our motel

Low-fat breakfast...?

After breakfast, we followed some of the locals to a meeting back on the mainland at Anacortes, and had lunch with them afterwards at their favourite Chinese restaurant.

That afternoon we drove home again, having had a slightly different kind of weekend to what we had anticipated, but a very nice one nonetheless!