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Back around the turn of the century I used to lead an MCC trip Festival weekend.
Submitted by Oci-One Kanubi on 31/Aug/2015 in reply to Re: Teter's Campground in Albright, WV, is the same distance or closer than those posted by Bob F on 30/Aug/2015
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We would paddle the Arden section of Tygart on Saturday, go to the Festival for a few hours in the evening (I would be a volunteer gate tender for 2 or 3 hours), then drive to camp at (IIR the name C) Five Pines campground. Then on Sunday we'd paddle the Top Yough, or something like that.
I think I did this for three or four years in a row, following the 1999 Festival weekend when I drove my big van into the ditch on the uphill side of the shuttle road to avoid knocking a small sedan off the cliff edge, when she failed to pull over and wait at a wide spot for me to pass. The van came to rest on the differential with both driving wheels in the air. Took a dozen or more of us stuffing wood and rocks under the wheel in the ditch, and pushing, to get it out -- blocking the shuttle road the whole time. Two of her three male passengers phoned me the next week to apologize and ask me not to blame the driver; she was a Cheat first-timer and the third male passenger had exhorted her to "just keep on driving; they won't stop for you if you don't!"
Point is, paddling the Cheat or the Sandy on Festival weekend meant a shuttle-road nightmare, and staying at Teter's on Festival weekend meant a campground nightmare.
Unless you are 18 years old and there to party hard, Festivals are to be avoided. Go for long enough to pay the price of admission, to help support AW, and to volunteer, but don't plan on staying the night. Ditto Gauley Fest: I would paddle the New River, volunteer at the gate for a few hours in the evening, take one tour 'round the circle of booths, then drive off to the campground in Hico; far from the Festival grounds. I didn't mind the Upper G shuttle on Festival weekends, but the Lower G put-in parking (back then) was at least as much of a nightmare as the Cheat shuttle road.
Expecting quiet hours at a paddling festival is a pipe dream.
-Richard, His grumpy ol' Kanubic Travesty
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