County Road 18

What are the three best things you want to have on the first Spring weekend of the year? Well, you won't believe this, but I had all of them this past weekend. No kidding. I had perfect camping weather, a gathering of over one hundred banjo players and a perigee-syzygy. Yes, you read that right. I can't believe it either.

So stay tuned as I'll be going into those things everyone dreams about over this and the next two posts, and how I was lucky enough to have them all in the same weekend.

Friday I headed down to High Springs, Florida for the 2011 Suwannee Banjo Camp. It is held every year at O'Leno State Park in the north central part of the state. The camp was amazing, but more about that in my next entry.

When warmer days first begin and the leaves start to sprout on the trees, I get a big time urge to go camping and sleep outside in my little ultralight tent. As it turns out, Kate was in Houston helping her mother and sister throw a bridal and a baby shower (for two different people), so I got to have a very Don-activity indulgent trip while she was gone. I had been reading about the camp for months and the location made it a perfect choice for my bachelor weekend.

So the first win of the trifecta was the weather. It was absolutely ideal for camping. Warm during the day, nice and cool at night. Early enough in the year that the mosquitos weren't out. Just some gnats. Ok, quite a few gnats. But gnats are a minor nusiance, although I did learn it is hard to play music by ear when your ears have gnats constantly flying in and out of them.

I did this painting on Sunday on my way back home. O'Leno SP has many great scenes with the Santa Fe River and a number of trails. However, after three days of bluegrass and old-time music I was more in a 'farming painting' type of mood.

I drove around the High Springs area quite a bit before I settled on this spot. Scouting in the flat farmlands of north Florida reminded me a lot of driving around North Texas with John and Steve looking for painting locations, and it brought back a lot of great memories. Since I had to drive five hours back to Atlanta, I stopped trying to find the 'perfect setting' and settled on one of the possibilties I identified.

As I walked up to the fence, I was thrilled to see the cows drinking out of an old bath tub that had been turned into a watering trough. We had a lot of old tubs back on the dairly farm for watering the cattle, and eventually when I was eleven we put one in the house for bathing. I immediately knew I wanted to make the trough the central point in my painting. In hindsight, I should have zoomed in a bit to make it more recognizable from a distance, but it was too tempting to include the mossy trees and big cloudy sky.

After a full long weekend of fiddle, banjo and guitar sounds, the tranquil silence of the farm really stood out. Just the occassional wind blowing, cow mooing or car driving by made any noise. The weather was once again immaculate, and even the gnats took it easy on me. Quite a nice way to cap it all off.

In a few days I'll write about the banjo camp! And after that, my painting - and the definition - of a perigee-syzygy.

• Don Thacker's Online Art Journal
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