Part Two- the music begins

 PART TWO NC Bluegrass Festival

August 16, 2024

The trip north to Marion North Carolina was uneventful, we had light traffic on the state highways we traversed and very minimal travel on interstate highways. We arrived on Wednesday, the day before the festival started. This gave us ample time to get the RV parked and set up. As I noted in part one, we are parked in an event center RV parking field. We are parked on grass but do have full utility hookups, 30 amp electric, water and sewer.

It's a tight squeeze in the rally campground


This whole complex, which includes the rally field, a traditional campground and an RV dealership used to be called Tom Johnson RV and was a nationally known and well-respected dealership. It now fly’s the giant American Flag that you see at every Camper World Store in the USA. 

Originally the Tom Johnson Camping Center it is now owned by Campers World


On Thursday before the show started, we drove into the city of Marion for a couple errands. We shopped at Walmart for bottled water and a few grocery items, cash from the ATM at Wells Fargo and of course two thrifts stores. All we bought at Goodwill was one DVD movie, so I’ll call that a successful trip!

Thursdays line up included several bands before the headliner, and we enjoyed each one. Bluegrass music has been filtering out of the mountains for many years and it has morphed into several variations. It is interesting to see which genre each band follows. 









Rhonda Vincent and the Rage was the opening day headliner. We’ve seen Rhonda Vincent show several times before (maybe as many as six times, but who’s counting) and it is always a first-rate performance and always a little different than the previous times we’ve seen her act.

Rhonda Vincent and the Rage


There is a dinner break at 4pm each day and today we drove to a local favorite restaurant, The Hook and Anchor. Our fried flounder dinner was so good we both overate and consumed our entire meal. No leftovers to take home today!

The evening set is a repeat of the earlier schedule, but the bands have a different line up of songs. It was a great first of three days of music.




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