Affordable Travel

In the town of Mount Airy, North Carolina, where the popular television show “Andy in Mayberry” was based (Mayberry being the fictional version of the actual town of Mount Airy), there is an annual music festival that attracts larger crowds and more musical performers each year, although the premise of the event is the celebration of old fashioned and traditional style acoustic music, played primarily on the fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Drums are out of place at this event, as are electrified instruments. Instead, hand crafted dulcimers and old fiddles are the more common tools for making music, which takes place on the main stage and also around the many campfires where people pitch tents to spend the weekend in a grand musical convention. But at night few of the festival goers get much rest, instead choosing to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to sit together in impromptu jam sessions, picking and singing tunes and passing bottles of liquor and cups of strong coffee to fuel themselves onward.

The gathering happens each year in the springtime, and if you contact the local Chamber of Commerce for Mount Airy, you can get information on lodging, tickets to the festival, and camping options. Plus, if you would like to compete for one of the prizes awarded to performers, there are many categories of contests and people of all ages can fill out applications and then perform their songs in front of the thousands of audience members for a chance to be recognized as the next great fiddler of the long-standing festival.

Walt Disney started out as a cartoon artist and as his cartoons grew, so did the advances in technology. Soon animated pictures were the newest way to project cartoons, and his characters came to life in movies and on television. Before his death, Disney had become as household name around the world, and the empire that he left behind is now a media conglomerate worth billions of dollars, with extensive properties and gigantic mega amusement parks located in various parts of the world. The two best know locations are in California and Florida. In Orlando, Florida, the Disney company has so much of a presence that it nearly owns that whole part of the state, and its considerable influence is felt throughout the political machinery of Florida, where the company enjoys unprecedented tax incentives and favors from the government which makes hundreds of millions of dollars of tourism dollars from the Disney owned attractions. If you visit Orlando, you can stay in a Disney themed hotel and then spend days on end exploring the Disney theme park, along with Epcot, a supernatural science and entertainment center opened to the public. Prices are relatively inexpensive to enter the Disney grounds, but you can expect to pay lots of dollars here and there for such things as snacks, rides, and souvenirs. Although hundreds of different package options are offered, they all focus upon kids who visit Disney World having the time of their lives while mixing it up with such characters as Mickey, Minnie, and Donald Duck.

If you want to visit the birth of American punk rock, go to the CBGB club at 315 Bowery Street, where such bands as the Ramones and Blondie got their start on the stage of what was once a rather dingy, seedy, and unknown little club. Punk poet Patti Smith, the rocking band Television, and groups including the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls were all regulars at the influential little hole in the wall. Now CBGBs attracts people from all over the world, not only for its high historical value but to pack the house for cutting edge bands that are still the bread and butter of the club. Back in the 70s and early 80s, the entire downtown of NYC was rather neglected, and as Joey Ramone once pointed out, those who went into NYC pretty much had the whole place to themselves because nobody else wanted to be there. Things have changed, and now any real estate even remotely near the city is sky high in price. Similarly, the old neighborhood of CBGBs club has “come up” a bit, and nearby tenants have begun to complain about the club’s noise and crowds. The landlord for the club has raised rent to keep up with the current real estate boom, and after the owner of CBGBs missed about $100,000 worth of rent payments, they ended up in high profile court case that caught the attention of music historians from around the world. For the time being the club is able to say open and continue its nightly music shows, but in the near future it may be forced to close down if the owner is not able to make the rent payments.

The biggest arts festival in the region of western North Carolina, USA takes place each summer in the historical downtown area of Asheville, the only substantial city in the entire Appalachian range of mountains. The festival occupies the downtown, which is restricted even to local residents from motor traffic, and lasts the entire weekend. Some 500 or more vendors selling everything from cotton candy to handmade furniture show up to sell their wares, and hundreds of musicians play for free on the many stages of the festival. Beginning in 2005, the festival also began to include special headliner performers, and there is a nominal fee of a few dollars to attend those shows.
Lodging in Asheville is generally packed-out for the festival, and locals even make extra money renting out their guestrooms to visitors. So if you have plans to attend the festival, it is a good idea to book your hotel or motel far in advance. Many people who go to Bele Chere will book rooms a year in advance, and you don’t want to arrive and find that there are not rooms available.
One of the best things about the festival is the food. Lots of restaurants and catering companies have booths and sell wonderful appetizers, dinner plates, and desserts at reasonable prices. Wear your best walking shoes, because the town is hilly and the festival covers about 20 square blocks of asphalt territory.

Until about 40 years ago, rail travel was not always comfortable or legal. Beginning in the early 1900s in the USA, many people - mostly men - would jump aboard freight trains and ride the boxcars around the country, seeing the sights while avoiding detection by the “railroad bulls” or security officers who patrolled the tracks. Woody Guthrie is just one of many folk singers who glorified the so-called “hobo tramps” of the USA. And most of them have now disappeared from the landscape, but there is an annual gathering in the town of Britt, Iowa, where hobos and those who are interested in hobo culture gather for singing, dancing, and camaraderie.
The festival convenes in August, and includes a Hobo Museum. Usually about 40,000 people show up for this odd festival, which not only brings needed income in the form of tourist dollars to the town of Britt, but helps to preserve the quintessential legacy of the old hobo culture, which is an important part of American history and folklore. So if you are heading that way in late summer - by car or by rail - be sure to stop off and mingle with some of the last remaining railroad vagabonds. Who knows? They might give you some tips on how to travel on your next vacation across the USA free of charge.

Merle Watson was a young musician, son of “Doc” Watson, when he died. In memory of his lost son, “Doc” created an annual music festival to celebrate the music that has made “Doc” a legend in the folk music scene. The festival began as a small gathering which used a flatbed truck for the main stage. Musicians played guitars, banjos, fiddles, and dulcimers, to a small audience of mostly local folks.

But the festival grew in popularity over the years, and now it is home to thousands of people who come from near and far to hear old time, bluegrass, and folk music played in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Wilkes Barre, NC. Famous names including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Earl Scruggs have played the stages and shared them with musicians like Natalie MacMaster, Bella Fleck, and Arlo Guthrie, who are still well known in their own right. The festival takes place on the campus of a local community college, is well organized, and is one of the only festivals in the country that attracts a big “family” crowd, and prohibits alcohol on the premises. Local members of the Rescue Squad, the public schools, and the various churches work alongside big corporate sponsors to supply the throngs with food and beverages, and many artists and crafts people show and sell their wares under lines of tents set up for that purpose.

Camping is also available for the many festival attendees who come from a long way away and prefer to sleep under the stars during the festival. For more info and details about attending the festival, visit the Merle Fest website, or call the Chamber of Commerce or the local tourist board in Wilkes County, NC.