This past Memorial Day weekend we drove up to Cumberland, MD so we could enjoy our first festival as a family! The kids had never been camping and we had not been to a festival since they were born. DelFest is extremely family friendly, with projects, events, and crafts for the kids all day long and great music for everyone! Our friends, Robin, Mark, and Cerys O'Sullivan joined us and we met up with Jack, Howard, Penny, Liz, and Carter when we got there. We were ready for good time!
Our Caravan arrived before noon on Saturday eager to set up camp! Our camp was perfect - two huge tents, 2 canopy's, plenty of extra chairs and tables, and more food and drinks than we could consume! Our neighbors were super sweet and Jack and his crew were right across the way.
Riley, Cerys, & Kyle settling in....
We walked over to the "late night venue" because it had A/C, listened to some tunes and headed back to camp for the kido's to nap.
Kyle napping - so sweet!
After naps, the kids had a bite to eat and a bit of rain started to come down. No prob - rain would cool the place off. Notice below, the rain behind Kyle... it started to come down harder, and harder....
Luckily, Robin was super smart and laid her water proof blanket over all our dry goods (eventually, the green canopy in the pix below collapsed on top of the black blanket below, keeping all the food dry. We were obviously no under the canopy any more).
Robin, Riley and Eric looking at the rain coming even harder...
Eventually we all headed to our respective tents to wait out the rain (see video below)... the rain kept coming, the winds whipped harder (I'm still waiting hear just how hard), and soon the 1st round of golf ball hail began... We have a nice size tent, so luckily, I was able to push a lot of stuff to the center to keep it and us some what dry. I held on to the kids and one wall of the tent, while Eric stood in the middle and held on to our ceiling - for nearly an HOUR and 2 rounds of fierce hail. If I had known any better, I would have thought it was a tornado - luckily it was not, but the environment was pretty darn close!
Riley had a rough time through the storm - crying "this rain is trying to ruin all the fun" and Kyle held on tight with a very serious, stone face on. I kept saying to Eric, "5 more minutes, right?" We've been though some camping storms, but nothing like this and NOT with our babies!
When the storm somewhat broke, we threw the kids in the van and began salvaging everything we could...
Both of our canopies were 6 plus camps away and our tents were full of wet nastiness. The kids were holding up well, but ultimately, we decided to try for a hotel for the night, dry out, and survey in the morning. And the morning looked great! While we were gone, the storm fairies (Liz and Penny!) came and layed out all our blankets, sleeping bags etc, to dry and when we got back, we sham-wowed our puddles away and set out for a great day of music!
Day 2 - back at camp - the kids playing. The green tent pictured here was deserted right after the eye of the Storm and filled with a foot of water.
Riley loved every minute of the hippy life - here she is washing her feel in storm water.
Kyle in our tent. Our tent held up REALLY well though the storm... especially since we ended up buying it right before we left and never water proofed it! thank goodness we were not in our old tent during this storm -we wouldn't have been back to rally the next day!
My hippy girl and daddy! Peace, love and cheese!
Eric cooking for camp - yummmm burgers!
Kyle and his girl Cerys eating blackberries. Kyle loved Cerys but Cerys preferred to play with Riley most the time! totally understandable - girls need to stick together! 
After the blackberries (it looks like he ate a live animal!)
heading down to the meadow for some music! The music meadow is at the base of a huge cliff (see behind pix) That evening, we could see mountain goats at the very edge of the cliff - super cool!
The mountain that probably caused all the crazy weather! We talked to one guy at the festival who had lived in cumberland for 30 years. He said that he had NEVER seen such weather.
The canopy/tent aftermath - sooo many tents and vendors were destroyed. No one was seriously hurt (possibly 4 lightening hits but no serious injuries)
Vendor alley - this pix was not taken by me b/c I was hiding in my tent.
Also, pix not taken by me! This was the beginning of the storm.
With exclusion of the storm, we had a great time and the kids loved camping! We hope in future years, we get less rain, more music, and no antibiotics (I've avoided mentioning Kyles diapers though this entire weekend, due to the repulsiveness of antibiotics not mixing well with this tummy!) We are so thankful that our families stayed safe, that no one was hurt at the festival and for all the wonderful people we met. Although the storm was horrible, the community that grows out of this type of destruction is beautiful! We are so happy the O'Sullivans joined us and hope we can convince them and other to join us next year, because we WILL be back!!In the tent, before things turned super ugly - can you hear how hard the rain is coming down?
Day 2 - another threat of serious rain - we hid out inside and listened to music. We never had another serious storm, thank God!
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John and Riley playing with baby Ben
