Rhinebeck (a/k/a theNew York State Sheep & Wool Festival) 2012.  Mecca for the fiber arts.

My sister and I hadn't been for a few years so this fine sunny with patches of fog Saturday morning we loaded the car and took off.  As it had been some time since we had gone I looked up the address and loaded it into my cell phone. 18 Nevis Road, Tivoli NY.  Plugged it into Googlr maps on my IPhone and we went bravely off where thousands of people were already heading.

We had to recalculate, as my sister had left her phone at her office, but we tooled along the Barkhampstead reservoir to 44 west to 199 north to Mountain Ross Road...sort of.  They don't do road names in NewYork or New England:  if you don't know where you are you shouldn't be here.  After 4 retracings we finally arbitrarily decided that the winding barely paved road had to be it, as the little red ball on my google map was right over it, and turned.  Up the hill and through numerous twists we went, coming to a T intersection which I didn't recall seeing on the map.  Checked the phone again and all was blank.  No cell reception.

Tapping the phone, shaking it, and cursing did not restore it, do we took our chances, knowing we needed to head North and West, and took the westward fork of the T, which suddenly turned profoundly South East about 2 miles later.  I checked the phone and Bingo! We had a signal: I asked it to calculate for 18 Nevis Road from the current location while my sister kept her eyes on the road.  Directions appeared and, just as I started to tell her where to turn, well, all went blank again.

"What do I do?"

"I don't know, the reception is gone..."

Rinse and repeat 8 or 9 times , but we did make it to Nevis Road.

And discovered this was not where the festival was.  We had been puzzled by Tivoli, NY but figured the show grounds had crossed the boarder.

Sis, thoroughly disgusted by the phone and probably me, stopped at a Citgo and got correct instructions.  We arrived about an hour later than we planned.  Once we got into the swing of things we had a blast: perfect fall weather, lovely projects, games for children to keep them happy, llamas, alpacas, cormu and Corriedale sheep, sheepdog demonstrations...and the best French fries on the planet.  We even bumped into two of our favorite spinners!  And on the way home we fell into a state of Silly Amusement picturing what would have happened if we had rung the bell at 18 Nevis and asked where the vendors were...

Pictures of my haul will follow later but there are 2 footnotes to this tale: we also got lead astray on the way home (one of the signs for a turn on 44 was missing) and I did locate the listing that put the NY SS&WF at 18 Nevis Road.  I showed it to my sister and we laughed like fools.  Next year, we remember The Dutchess County Fair Grounds and bring a back up, low tech, map!