Do you remember where you were on Friday March 13, 2020? We were at the 35th Annual Texas Storytelling Festival in Denton, TX, my very first though Loren has been attending, performing, and teaching at the festival for many years.
We arrived by plane in the morning, ate at our favorite local Denton taco shack, Tortilleria La Sabrocita for lunch, and by the afternoon the festival was canceled. COVID-19 had been declared a national emergency and the City of Denton closed their facilities, including the civic center which is the festival venue. Tejas was allowed to finish off Friday evening events and then the in-person festival was over for the next two years. Like many, the conference went virtual for 2021-2022 and when they started back in-person in 2023, we were there but not yet as AMSS. We opened our doors in August that year.
Last Wednesday, March 11, we set out by car to the 41st Annual Texas Storytelling Festival, our first major road trip of 2026. We love road trips in general but my sister had been in Minneapolis since New Year’s attending to her oldest child’s medical needs. We brought her up from Illinois and promised to take her back. So with our loaded car, we finished breakfast at Al’s and headed south through Iowa.
Road timing had us in Iowa City, IA at the Hamburg Inn for lunch, a well known local establishment. Unfortunately, there was no time to see storyteller Kory May on this unplanned stop. That evening, we arrived in Peoria, IL, dropped off my sister, and met my niece and her family for dinner. Then we were off again south to our hotel in Collinsville, IL just east of St Louis, MO and a nightcap with an old high school friend living there now. We’d travelled over 600 miles on day one.
Day two, Thursday, March 12, we were up and at ‘em though St. Louis to Joplin, MO for lunch at Club 1201 then south through Oklahoma. We drove and drove as afternoon turned to evening, though Tulsa, OK and Oklahoma City, through the Native American reservations until we crossed the Red River into Texas. At 6:55pm we passed the Denton city limits as the ‘Shadows and Spirits: An Evening of Ghost Stories’ concert was about to begin at 7:00pm. We opted to get dinner at the GreenHouse and crash at the hotel after driving 675 miles (not literally).
The Texas Storytelling Festival offers 12-hours of concerts, workshops, and social events over multiple tracks each day on both Friday and Saturday. Sunday the festival wraps up with a half day of programming so those Texas folks can get home by Sunday night. We ate at great Denton restaurants like Andersons Eatery and Hannah’s. We saw some great storytelling, taught and attended workshops, and got to visit with old and new friends.
But Iona was not one of them…
We saw the blizzard warnings in Minnesota for Winter Storm Iona and weighed out options- stay to the end of the festival and drive as far as we could Sunday afternoon, likely to Wichita, KS? Or leave early, make it to Kansas City, MO and hope the roads would be cleared by lunch on Monday? For better or worse, we decided to stick to the original plan and leave Texas at the crack of dawn on day five, Sunday, March 15, the Ides of March.
The winds were howling at 40mph and gusting up to 65mph as we headed north through Oklahoma City and Wichita, KS where we stopped for lunch in Andover, KS at Point Nine, a restaurant with brunch and live music located on the local Redbud bike trail. The flakes started east of Emporia, KS and were falling at a good clip by the time we stopped at the hotel. We got dinner at a local chain steakhouse and saw an RV towing a monster truck in the parking lot as we left. The driver had sat at the table across from us, though we didn’t know it. The greatest regret from the trip is that we don’t have a photo.
On day six, Monday, March 16, all interstates leaving Des Moines were closed- I-35N, I-80 E/W. We could get there maybe, but we were not getting out. The roads were covered in snow due to blowing white-out conditions and the farther north we looked, the worse it got. We renewed our hotel room and decided to enjoy Kansas City, MO.
Our afternoon was spent at the Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art, dinner at the Blue Bird Bistro, and as luck would have it, we found a storytelling open mic, hosted monthly by R.A.W. Storytelling KC! What are the chances? Even stranger, one of the tellers that night, Mary Schmidt, used to be part of the Minnesota storytelling community and knew Loren and one of the hosts was born in Hibbing and told a story about going to high school there- small world!
But all good things must come to an end and early in the morning on day seven, Tuesday, March 17, we pointed our car north, drove through the aftermath of Iona (drifts, semis in the ditch, cars flipped), and closed the large circle we drew across the central time zone at lunch in Clear Lake, IA. We were home and napping before rush hour, 2,330 miles travelled in total.
Many thanks to Chris Nelson and Peter Bretl for hosting the March AMSS Storytelling open mic in our absence!
Here is a list of upcoming festivals we are attending:
Story Arts of Minnesota- Storyfest in Bloomington MN, Saturday, April 4th at 9am to 10pm- Loren and Christine are both performing
League of Minnesota Poets- Thawlight Spring Conference in Ely, MN, April 10-12- Christine is attending
National Storytelling Network- Prairie Voices Conference in Canyon, TX, July 23-26- Loren is teaching and hosting the Story Slam, Christine is attending
And of course all the classes and performances at our venue, 1762 Hennepin in Minneapolis.
Would you like us to visit your festival or conference? How about a weekend retreat or workshop in your town? Send us some information and/or a proposal- Have stories, will travel!
Happy Spring!
Loren & Christine
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