Grandfather Mountain 2012

[Pyper]

Answers to several questions posed in the past few pages:

Hotels -- There are hotels in Boone. You can ride a shuttle from Boone to the games and back. I've seen the shuttle line in the evening as long as maybe a quarter mile. I've never ridden a shuttle, so I have no clue what it's like in the AM. Probably not too bad from Boone. The worst part of that is probably walking through the campground, seeing us all eating and drinking, and knowing that you've got at least an hour just in the line.

Food -- Food vendors are operational Thursday through Friday. Think state fair food. As a camper you'll definitely want to bring your own. If you like meat pies, scotch eggs, hamburgers and/or curly fries, you might plan to eat that stuff for the Friday night concert, or maybe for Saturday lunch. There's a place right next to the campground entrance that churns icecream on site, and I usually get a cup of that. There are various pot luck dinners in the campground on Saturday, so bring some extra if that appeals to you.

Booze -- Avery county is dry. That means only that there is no alcohol sold in the county. There is no prohibition on consumption. Since you can't sell any alcohol in the county, it means that there is no beer tent. Because there is no beer tent, the games has no policy prohibiting you bringing your own -- there's no risk of lost sales. The custom is to keep your beer in a coozie, your wine in a cup, and your Scotch in a flask while on the games site, but in 20 years I've never seen, or even heard of, anyone being bothered about an open container. If you are camping, it's anything goes. We drink wine out of stemware, and people proudly display bottles of Scotch -- I have friends who bring kegs of beer... But there are drug dogs.

If you do facebook you might want to look at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games group. There have been several discussions about the camping and so forth recently.