I wish I was as helpful to regular readers of this news group as you have been for me. Gail Norris in Eugene (Oregon) and Carol Baily in Madras have sorted out a couple of basic travel issues for me and I'm grateful.

I just read Gail's account of her visit to Cape Breton and the music of Dougie McClain. My wife and I have used folk music, Celtic and otherwise, to visit Vancouver, BC, for the Vancouver Folk Festival and for a visit in the summer of 2001 to Burlington, Vermont, for the Champlain Valley festival. My son lives in central Mass so we spent a leisurely week wandering south from Burlington to where he lives in Barre. (We found ourselves in Brattleburo, VT, one night, and spent it in the Hotel Latchis. Most towns in the United States used to have hotels like this in the old days and I wish they still did.)

I might be able to advise travelers to the northwest about the best places to find ancient, old growth forest in the Cascades or the Coast Range since I've worked as a environmental advocate for wilderness preservation for over thirty years. I go out and walk around in the wooods a lot.

Thanks again to this site for helping me put together plans for our next European trip--Paris to Slovenia and then perhaps Zagreb, just so I could boast about having been there.

John in Stayton, Oregon...