This past Tuesday marked three years since I became a resident of North Carolina.
I feel that I am quickly becoming cemented into the local community.
Just last week, I met with the executive director and conductor of our local regional symphony, the Western Piedmont Symphony. The ensemble is based in Hickory, NC. They want to partner with me in some fashion to help them with publicity online. We are ironing out the details.
I am in discussions with the Burke County Arts Council about establishing a community chorus. Every community needs an non-auditioned community chorus, and Morganton does not yet have one...
In June, I played my music at the open mic that the Burke County Arts Council sponsored. I was the only classical musician that performed, but good music is good music regardless of genre, and It was great to meet other musicians in the community.
While my composition work takes me far and wide (and I hope yer farther and wider), I still believe that it is important for musicians to have a "home base" and a local community they invest in.
So, about that far-and-wide bit...
If you follow me on social media, you have probably seen my posts and reels about the long road trip I took at the beginning of this month.
I left on July 2 for a 10-day solo road trip. LOTS of pics below!
I spent the first night at a hotel in Baton Rouge, LA. The next day, I went to the Old State Capitol Museum. It was very interesting. I learned a lot about the racial and political history of Louisiana. I wanted to get real Louisiana food for lunch, but surprisingly most of the restaurants were closed for the 4th of July!
I then drove to San Antonio and stayed with my friend Terri. She was my college roommate and one of my bridesmaids. We've stayed in touch on Facebook but hadn't seen each other in 25 years!
While I was in San Antonio, I attended the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and made some connections. Terri took me to see the Alamo. (FYI, the only thing there is the church, not the whole fort...) Interesting fact: they have a museum there as well, and much of the collection was donated by Phil Collins.
On July 5, I drove to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas and spent the night in Gulpha Gorge Campground. It was raining, so I didn't set up the tent and slept in the car (see pics.) A wet tent is not the issue...it is having to pack up the dirty tent with all the mud collected during the rain...
While in Hot Springs, I took an auto road up Hot Springs Mountain and went to the observatory/museum at the top. It was very interesting and I got a good birds-eye view of the town of Hot Springs and the surrounding Ozark Mountains, which look a lot like the Blue Ridge mountains though not as high. I also discovered that Hot Springs has a public fountain where people can fill up their own water containers with official Hot Springs water for free. I thought, "I could live off grid here." lol. I did see one man filling up about 10 5-gallon jugs and load them into his pick-up.
The next day, I drove to Nashville and stayed with my uncle. He gave me a packet of information about my family tree and I learned my grandfather's name for the first time. (He died when my Dad was young, so I never met him.)
I then went to Mammoth Caves NP. On the way there, I took a boat tour into Lost River Cave. The visitors center at Mammoth Caves had been built in the years since I last visited and had quite a nice museum. Again, it rained and I slept in the car. The tours of the caves for the next morning were fully booked, so I left early to find a good coffee shop and then headed to Lousiville.
In Louisville, I met up with my friend Emily for coffee and we chatted for two hours. Then I headed to my last destination: Oxford, OH.
There, I finally set up my tent and attended the annual conference of the International Double Reeds Society on Friday and Saturday.
I was proud of myself for getting the tent set up all by myself, but I have to admit that I was a little frightened when I heard something snarl and growl around my tent after dark - a noise I had never heard before! I later learned it was a raccoon! I was surprised they could make such a loud, scary noise!
Here's a video of a raccoon making the sounds I heard. (Toward the end of the video.)
After the workshop where my piece Chili & Chocolate was presented, I started home and arrived around 11:45PM. Then I got up for church and played organ and piano the next morning!
You might wonder why I camped. Why not stay in a hotel? While I love camping, the primary reason was to keep costs down. When I did the math, flying separately to each of these conferences plus the hotels, buying meals at hotels, and the cost of transportation would have cost me at least $1500. Oxford, OH, where the IDRS conference was, is an hour outside Cincinnati, so it's either rent a car or pay a premium price for an Uber to get there. This is on top of the $200 per conference I paid for a ONE DAY PASS. (These conferences are unbelievably costly!) And as a freelancing composer, this is all on my own dime.
I had to cut costs wherever I could. I estimate that my costs would have been half that, even if I had not stayed with Terri or my uncle for a few nights. Despite the cost of gas. Being able to bring and prepare my own food cut down on costs the most, and campgrounds are 1/3 or less the cost of a hotel.
Overall, the trip was a success, but here are some take-aways:
- I can drive alone much more than I thought.
- I am really good at packing food for a road trip. I only bought food for about 4 meals (mostly the last day) and I really didn't need to.
- The mirage effect is real. (see pic.)
- I still love camping.
- Sleeping in the car is for absolute emergencies only. Rain is not an emergency.
- I still don't want to deal with the muck on the bottom of a wet tent for a one-night stop
- Camping is better overall than staying in a hotel for me, but sleeping in the car is not.
- I spent a lot of time alone driving, but I also saw a lot of people at the conferences and along the way. Overall, this was a very social trip (more so than I expected) and I ended it feeling very peopled-out.
Would I do such a trip again? YES, but with some changes. Namely, I need a camper.
But even pop-up campers need a car more powerful than our "compact crossover SUV." I don't want to drive a bigger car. So, what to do?
I discovered the Sylvan Sport Go, and I want one. This is why:
- It is lightweight and can be pulled by a small car.
- Even when loaded, it is still under the weight limit of our car
- It can be used as a trailer as well as a "camper"
- It is easy for one person to set up.
- It is a tent, but it is off the ground....so no muck!
- It has a lot of storage
- It can also carry stuff on the top rack like bikes or kayaks, or a storage tote like you'd put on a car
- The way the trailer can be used means I can tote all camping gear on the trailer, leaving room in my car for things like scores if I set up a composer table at a future conference (part of the long-term plan.)
- They have really thought of everything for a really well-designed tent so it can be slept in, but it also has a table to sit at so you can do stuff inside the tent when it rains.
- It will make it easier to continue to do road trips. Road trips are necessary if I'm going to continue to attend lots of conferences and set up a booth with scores (I cannot fly with all that weight.)
The problem, of course, is cost. I have found some used ones on Facebook but they are still out of reach right now.
This camper would make all my conference travel easier, keep it relatively affordable (compared to flights, hotels, renting cars, and eating out at restaurants the whole time), allow me to transport scores, and also make it easier to line up tours for my A Woman's Place piano recital.
If you would like to help keep me on the road by donating to help me get this camper, you can do so at the link below. I would be so incredibly grateful, and I might even be able to set up a recital in your location if you're in the 48 contiguous US States!
https://heather-niemi-savage-music.kit.com/products/go-camper-donation
