As much as we love touring around in Ruby to great international places, we also enjoy driving her to local places for different events. In 2018 a friend told us about the “world famous” Wild Oats and Notes Music festival, just SW of Edmonton. The music fest took place on private farmland, attended by no more than 1200 concert go-ers and was just overall a very excellent time! The money raised goes to help support the local towns music program for kids. We love supporting local and supporting kids, so this was going to be a repeat for us! It only runs every second year – and well that of course resulted in cancellation for two years during Covid. We eagerly awaited notification in the spring that they were going to run the festival. We have been talking about this event so much over the last 2 years to all our camping friends, that when they announced it was happening, almost EVERYONE we knew wanted to tag along. So, with our crew in tow, we ventured up to the metropolis of Tofield, AB – to the Shultz family farm. We were greeted with perfect summer weather, sunshine and blue skies!
Camped in the back 40, with the canola field.
This is the kind of music festival that you bring your own lawn chair, cooler, snacks and drinks and hang out at the stage or go back to your rig and jillax.
Hitching a ride to the stage.
Les and Wendy from Chilliwack came with us (we met them in Baja!)
Owens first concert, playing trucks with Todd.
The concerts start at 1 pm and the headliner ends each night around 11:30 – by headliner I don’t mean AC/DC but they are VERY good bands that may be local, from Western Canada, the US or Mexico and very skilled musicians. Overall, the quality of music we listed too was excellent and covered off almost every music genre in North America that you could imagine. We were pretty lucky for weather on arrival day and day 2 but by day 3 – in true Alberta form, the weather turned sour, and we basically had to prepare for cold and rain. But since we live in our Ruby, we have all 4 seasons of clothes and shoes on board because this Alberta weather is never our first rodeo.
Stupid crappy weather
Owens first concert – he was a trooper! And well prepared for the weather.
The positive thing about being so prepared, is that we have enough supplies for everyone who needs and if we don’t have it, usually Deanne and Wade (Big bus) have it. Linda (who camped in a tent or maybe the van, I’m not sure) decided she needed to feed the troops with warmth. She shows up with ALL the ingredients to make Thai Coconut chicken and shrimp soup for 25 people – while CAMPING IN A FIELD?! Who does this?! She does! We make the soup, but the next dilemma is “how do we get the soup to the people?” Since everyone was at the stage. We go into Big Bus and and find not just 1 but 2 ginormous thermoses.
Thai coconut chicken shrimp soup for the troops
These things are massive – and stored ALL the soup for the people!
Staying dry, dressed in layers….waiting for soup.
Soup in the solo cup
Well, I have to say it was frickin’ delish! Why I don’t have a picture of Linda is a mystery. She can come camping with us anytime!
The weekend was fantastic! Now how are we gonna get the buses out of the muddy field????
This is not looking good!
We decided to leave the buses overnight – since the sun was out and drying everything up. Todd and Wade were pretty sure that if the sun could dry out the ground a bit more, then it would be no problem getting the beasts out. Big thanks to Danni & Steve for driving us and all our worldly possessions to Red Deer. The next day, they guys drove back to the farm site and yanked them out, I think fairly unscathed. (I didn’t get photo’s). Put this music festival in your list of t-do’s friends and help support music programs for kids: (Wild Oats & Notes Music Festival | June 30th – July 2nd, 2022 | Tofield, AB (wildoatsandnotes.com)