Big Red's sojourn into Maryland for the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival proved [caption id="attachment_206" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Big Red at Bethesda Fine Arts Festival"] [/caption] successful despite a few bumps in the road.  Thankfully, none of those had anything to do with the festival. Big Red, nor I, do very well in 16 lanes of traffic especially on Friday afternoon during rush hour.  That's when we got to Maryland.  Back roads around DC have 16 lanes I think. After Peggy and I picked up the trailer at Woodbridge and performed a modest cleaning job, we headed north and our motel reservation in Silver Springs.  The traffic was unbelievable causing us to consider what Marylanders must do.  In the morning when getting the kids off to school, you'd better pack an extra sandwich, an extra bottle of water and a change of underwear because guaranteed, the kidlets will be late getting home.  Maybe three of four days late.  Stuck on I495 or one of the other roads around Washington. Then we discovered that the cities of Silver Springs and Bethesda are not laid out in nice square blocks like I'm used to.  Everything is in triangles, but nobody told me that.  Imagine my surprise when on Saturday morning after searching for a grocery store only to find one in the basement of some high-rise with no parking, I dropped Peggy off, told her to run into the store and pick up 10 lbs of sugar, and I'd drive around the block and pick her up.  No problem.  Four right turns and I'm back in the same place.  WRONG.  Four right turns and I think I was in Delaware.  41 miles later, I finally found Peggy standing on the corner calling me every name you can think of.  I was tempted to put out an Amber Alert--on me!  At least she didn't go with either of the sailors or the wino that tried to pick her up. [caption id="attachment_207" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bethesda Fine Arts Festival"] [/caption] The festival itself was fabulous and I can't say enough about Lauren Hamilton and her staff.  Great event, one that I hope to be invited to next year.  I'm guessing their attendance might have been down a little from previous years, but not enough to matter. Peggy kicked butt with crepes.  More than we've ever done before.  Lemonade on Saturday was awesome and we rolled with funnel cakes both days.  The only disappointment from our limited menu was sweet tea and I forgot that Yankees don't drink sweet tea and I was north of the Mason Dixon line.  Oh, well, we still sold about 4 gallons (about 10% of our lemonade sales). The only other problem came from Peggy spending almost all of her time either cooking crepes or squeezing lemons.  That left me to cook the funnel cakes, add the powdered sugar and toppings, fix the drinks, serve the customers and take their money.  At least we didn't have hundreds of people standing in line.  We did have four or five in line the entire weekend, but that gave us a pretty comfortable pace. All in all, a great weekend. This week continues my crazy pace.  I'm home for a total of 16 hours mostly spent cleaning, doing laundry and packing for the next Potomac Nationals home stand. I have to be in Woodbridge tomorrow morning to get set up for an 11 AM start with about 4,000 kids coming.  I'm there for three games and then head back to the farm for the Bedford County Relay For Life on Friday, an event that lasts from 6PM until 6AM Saturday morning. Hopefully, then, I can get a full night's sleep.