What summer music concerts have you most enjoyed over the years?
One week from today back in 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival took place in the quaint, Catskill Mountain setting of Bethel, New York. I suppose that I’d envisioned that iconic event in the back of my mind when we booked a concert on our road trip to see the band Phish in an open air amphitheater nearby the original Woodstock site. Yet as had happened in 1969, the countryside Bethel vicinity still presented formidable challenges with regard to parking, lodging and road access to efficiently handle the thousands of people who would be attending the three Phish concerts scheduled this weekend.
So we hoped our relatively inexpensive motel destination in Walton, New York sixty some miles north of Bethel would somewhat solve this problem. For we’d anticipated a leisurely drive in early afternoon to the concert followed by a relaxing opportunity to just “hang out” on the designated concert lawn in hippie-like fashion for a few hours before Phish took the stage. Perhaps there would also be something going on at the adjacent Bethel Woods Center For The Arts to capture our pre concert interest.
But the real story for us on this day would become the rapidly intense approach of Tropical Storm Debby inland across Central New York with 50 mph+ winds and flooding conditions. No doubt this unusual weather anomaly contributed to reports of over an hour and half backup of traffic in all directions to Bethel town. When our secondary market tickets on Ticketmaster neither qualified as refundable or tradeable, we simply had no choice but to cancel out on tonight’s agenda and “eat the tickets” so to speak.
So for those who still choose to head to the concert, I would imagine it’s going to be quite different than 1969. For can this new assemblage of Woodstock concert goers once again find peace and love sitting in the mud covered lawn section as they try to sing, dance, and smoke pot in the pelting rain? Be my guest!
For added interest below, I did manage to take some photos of our cornfield motel environs and downtown Walton before the weather deteriorated.
Snippets of a Traveling Mind 
Was looking forward to the concert but not driving an hour to get there, deal with elements, and sitting on the lawn. Tickets for the seats were expensive.
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