In which our heroine and supervillain hike around the lake, in which the mammoth makes a break for it (but is thankfully recovered!), in which the festival suffers an accident (which we do not see), and in which perfectly ridiculous amounts of fun are had seeing De Temps Antan–and then getting pics with them afterwards! With Jean-Claude!

Our first agenda when Dara and I got up this morning was to explore other bits of Harrison we hadn’t seen yet. This included the little river right behind our B&B, first up. Our B&B is actually a tiny complex of cottages; we’re in the main one, but there are a couple of others behind us and a rather big backyard leading back to a little river. There’s a kayak you can take out on the water if you like, as well as a sign warning that life jackets are mandatory. We didn’t go out on the water at all but we did get some nice pics.

After that, we decided to try to hike around the lake in the direction we hadn’t gone yet, which involved following the road our B&B is on up around the lakeside. Lillooet Avenue amuses me just because there’s a Paperboys song by the name of “Lillooet”, and it does rather sound like it ought to be one of my flute names, doesn’t it? Anyway, this road led us up and around the lake a ways, so we could get some shots of the lake from angles we didn’t get before. This particularly let us get a good look at the snow-covered peak hiding behind some of the other smaller, tree-covered hills.

We spotted several old weather-beaten buildings, one of which had a sign that indicated it was probably the HQ for the music festival, and another that said ‘Restaurant’ without any elaboration whatsoever. One has to admire the straightforward basicness of that. Once we got past the buildings, we came up on an area of breakers, with a large rocky expanse where people could pull in and launch small craft if they wanted. And on the way into that, a couple of other ladies walked past us and we had a bit of a chat. They pegged us for Americans right off of the bat, in no small part due to my accent–my Kentucky wasn’t out in force, but one of the ladies said she had an American husband, so the distinction in accents between “Seattle” (or in my case, “Kentucky watered down by Seattle”) and “BC” is probably pretty clear to her.

Once past that we started getting into more residental-type areas. We passed several houses and several wide driveways marked private, so we didn’t go down any of those. But we did find one offshoot still-public street that we ducked down a ways, which let us get a couple more pics! One thing that did amuse me was passing one little street sign that said “Pirates Lane”. Which apparently where the pirates live in BC. One presumes you have to put them somewhere.

Eventually we got far enough though that the road started veering away from the lake, and that was no fun, so we started heading back down. On the way down though an old gent pulled up next to us to warn me that my backpack was open. I told him it was supposed to be, expecting that I could show him Jean-Claude…

Except OHNOEZ! Jean-Claude was gone!

So Dara and I decided we’d have to split up. I backtracked to look for the mammoth, while Dara went back down the road to go and fetch our car. I was a bit nervous at this point, given that part of the way we’d come had required us to make our way along the outer side of protective barriers between the road and the lake. And there wasn’t much in the way of ground on the outer side of those barriers, either. In a couple of places in particular, I had had to scoot around a couple of small trees. So I was half-afraid one of those trees had maybe caught the mammoth, yoinked him out of my backpack, and sent him tumbling down into the water.

Very, very fortunately, that hadn’t actually happened. I found the mammoth lying on the road back up where Dara and I had crossed to the other side, to better position ourselves to be suitably seen in advance by oncoming traffic. So he wasn’t even on the side of the road by the lake. Whew. Crisis averted!

Because indeed, O Internets, I would have been very sad if I’d lost Jean-Claude. Especially given that it turned out to be super-critical that I have him, later on in the afternoon!

But I’ll get to that. Before then, Dara safely picked me up in the car, and we came back to the B&B to get our instruments so we could then find lunch and somewhere to hang out and play until it was time for De Temps Antan’s second show.

On the way to finding lunch, though, was when the one major downer note of the day happened. We were scoping out where I could maybe get a salmon burger of some sort, and were making our way back to the burger joint we’d deemed a fallback plan in case we didn’t find anything that looked tastier, when just back around the corner from where we’d come there was a huge CRUNCH. People started shouting and running in that direction. Those of us just outside the restaurant we were approaching started exchanging concerned looks. And Dara and I opted not to go over and check out what was going on, so as to avoid adding to the rubbernecking.

We heard from conversation going around that at least two people had been hit by a car, and not long after heard that there had been two vehicles involved. While Dara and I were eating our lunch, we saw two different ambulances show up–and later after we’d played our instruments a while, we spotted an ambulance chopper coming in, too. So at least one person who’d gotten hurt was pretty bad off.

The consolation though was that we’d heard that the injured parties were at least conscious. So here’s hoping they come out of it okay!

The festival did proceed on as planned, and the musical performances did continue. In fact, once we finished our lunch, the band who had the beach stage was loud enough that we had to go quite a bit farther down the beach to find a place to practice.

Eventually, though, it became time for round two of De Temps Antan!

We quickly found Ginny coming into the audience as well as the gent with her who introduced himself to me as Gary! And Ginny even kindly bought today’s festival buttons for me and Dara, so I reciprocated by getting her a bottle of water just before the show started. Ginny and Gary had a third friend with them as well, who spoke proudly of her musically inclined son, and there was quite the exchange of contact cards. We all sat together, this time on the opposite side of the stage, and that’s where Dejah caught up with us as well!

Pic-taking began pretty much as soon as the boys started, too!

And to my great delight, De Temps Antan fired off their set with what I’d been waiting for: “La turlutte du rotoculteur”!

This, of course, is hands down my favorite track of theirs. It’s the song that sold me on De Temps Antan in the first place. It’s the song that, not content with laying down a badass turlutte, segues from that right into a badass bouzouki solo before layering in fiddle and harmonica that set the whole piece ON FIRE. You may expect that I started happily singing the turlutte bit along with them. 😀

There was a bit of overlap with the set from the day before–they did “La Maison Renfoncée” again, but I did not mind in the slightest to hear “Grand Amuseur de Filles” again (STEPDANCING STOMPOFF! READY! SET! GO!), or “Pétipétan” for that matter. Again, because these are songs I can kinda sorta sing along to!

We got several songs that they didn’t do the day before, though! “Dimanche dernier”, for example, which is full of bouzouki slide goodness. And Éric took the lead on “Pu D’Argent”, after making jokes about how you don’t need money to have friends anymore, not when we have Facebook.

André introduced another new piece as well, which he described as a waltz he’d written three years before, for his wedding. As a newbie session player who loves any situation involving the words “new piece written by André Brunet”, you may rest assured, O Internets, that I will be paying close attention to this one when the new album drops!

There was more dancing this time as the boys urged us up for the last couple of songs. I got the HELL up and bouncedanced–I can’t really call it stepdancing yet since I don’t have the proper foot motions down, but I was at least able to get in a few slightly more complicated steps besides just keeping the beat! And this time, the audience, including yours truly, yelled VERY loudly for an encore. That got us what I think was the “diaper” set again, if I recognized it correctly!

So yeah, that was all EIGHTY-NINE KINDS OF FUN. But amusements weren’t done yet. Because I invoked the power of Dejah, telling her “SO will you ask the guys if I can have a mammoth pic?”

Note that I said “a mammoth pic”. I was expecting one pic, maybe two. I got THESE!

These were all taken with my phone by Dejah, and Dara kept snapping pics too–but the boys didn’t stop with me, either! They got in some pics with Dejah, and a couple with Ginny and Gary as well!

So yeah, we’re talking une craptonne métrique de fun here, people. Also: 50 points to House Beaudry for Éric kindly agreeing to mail me a copy of Norouet’s first album, which I didn’t have yet! Dara and I promptly gave him twenty bucks for the privilege! (Éric told me that the only copies he’s aware of being sold online are bootlegs, so I’d just as soon hand him money directly.)

Merci beaucoup et mille fois merci à les gars for their time and their graciousness! Dara and I quickly scampered off after all of that, to let them go about their business and so we could go get fudge, have some dinner, and settle in for the tail end of a superlative weekend!

Tomorrow: home!

editing to add

• 11/8/2024: Ported this post onto the new version of angelakorrati.com. Pics adjusted to make them native WordPress galleries, and URLs on them edited to point to the correct new domain.