Howdy folks! This week has been going great so far. Here’s a quick recap: We arrived in Hot Springs, NC on Thursday evening after driving for about 450 miles. That took about 7 hours. Which is nothing to the Appalachian Trail thru-hikers that have taken a month or so to walk the 274 miles from Springer Mt. in Georgia with all their needed possessions on their backs. We had an amazing time singing for the hikers at the Spring Creek Tavern. Then we had a great time drinking beers with them until 2 or 3 in the morning. And then we had a great time crashing on their hotel room floor. Reverse trail magic. You guys rock.

On Friday we headed a little ways south in NC to play in Franklin. Since the drive was relatively short and had some time to burn, we hit up the grocery store and bought up a bunch of bananas, oranges, cookies, soda pop and beer. We found the closest trail crossing and stayed there in the rain for about three and a half hours passing out almost all of our stuff.  It was immensely fun to talk with so many folks near the beginning of their long journey. Every single one of them was incredibly grateful for not only the food and drinks, but also the knowledge from experience that Herb and I had to offer. Real good times. And some of them even made it out to the show that night in Franklin.

Our next encounter with trail folk will be at Trail Days in Damascus, VA in mid-May. And we are working on more shows along the bubble. So if any hikers are reading this, please check the schedule later on down the road. Hopefully we’ll have more opportunities to play music for you in VA, PA, MA, VT and/or NH. Stay tuned.

On to more current matters. We’ve made our way to the coast of Carolina today and will be playing at The Juggling Gypsy in Wilmington on Tuesday night. The show starts around 830pm. There’s a small cover charge.

After that, we head to another “Spring Research and Development Conference”. This years event is happening at Merlefest. We’ll be hanging out with Rollin’ Ralph and T-Peg all weekend listening to some of the best americana musicians in the world all day and then playing music in the campground all night. We’ll sleep when it’s over on Sunday. If anyone’s staying at the VFW campground, come and find us and let’s play some music.