Our first camping trip in the Eurovan was to the Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering at the Tippecanoe Battlefield in Battle Ground, Indiana, near Lafayette (between Chicago and Indianapolis). We have always loved a good folk festival, and this was the closest thing we could find that we could actually make it to. We loved it, except for the weather being up to 98 degrees!

About The Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering Festival

The Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering (IFG) is a 3-day acoustic music festival with one stage that hosts old-time, bluegrass, swing, jazz, fiddle, string band, Celtic and folk music artists. They have performances every evening, workshops in the morning, and activities throughout the afternoon. Past activities include a children’s concert, open stage, evening dance, and gospel hour.

The paid festival part is inside a fenced area, which included food, merchant vendors, and a local beer area. The workshops are held outside the fenced area for free, anyone with a fiddle or ears could join in to play and listen. There is a huge parking lot, tent and camper camping, port-a-potties, and an earth friendly trash system. I would call it a small to medium sized festival, compared to others we’ve been to.

The IFG is actually a non-profit organization that works at preserving traditional music through performances, education, and outreach. They use the festival to support folk artists on tour and fundraise for their kids music programs. So it’s a little confusing that the organization has the same name as the festival, but now you know!

The festival is always held the last weekend in June. In 2020 due to COVID they decided to make it virtual and called it the “Indiana Fiddlers’ UnGathering” which I think is clever. It’s set for June 25-27 in 2021 and is coming up on 50 years in 2022!

The Festival

We drove up to the Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering on Friday right after lunch to time it with the kids’ naps. Luckily they are good car nappers! It was weird having them so far away in the back of the van, though, you cannot easily hand them things.

We arrived in the afternoon and found a spot in the car camping area under a tree for some cool shade. (They have like 5 electrical hookups and it’s first come first serve, so we didn’t even try.)

Then we headed to the festival! It takes place on a large grassy lawn with beautiful huge trees spread around. Everyone brought chairs and blankets and listened to fiddling music. There was a huge empty grass area to the right where kids were running and playing and dancing, it was idyllic. But boy was it hot, and in the evening the mosquitoes came, so be prepared!

The evening was eventful, but more on that later. It was also my favorite part of the festival because we fell asleep to popup fiddling groups playing into the night. It was quite magical.

The next morning there were a bunch of workshops scattered across the grounds, so we walked around listening to little clusters of fiddlers practicing things I am not trained to hear. This part is outside the main festival area so you can come participate for free. We skipped from one to another to keep the kids moving, all the way to the end of the grounds where there was a little memorial and access to trails.

We would have liked to explore more, but didn’t have time. I have since found out that the trailhead we saw by the memorial was the start of the 13 mile linaer Wabash Heritage Trail and the 3 mile loop through Tippecanoe Battlefield and Prophet Rock. There was also a museum for the battlefield that gets good TripAdvisor reviews and a nature center, but I don’t remember those being open. Across the street is Prophetstown State Park, which has camping, a 1920s farm, restored prairie, aquatic center, and hiking trails. If you have an extra day or two, that would be a good place to stay for an extended weekend!

In the afternoon the main area had an “open stage” which is neat for people wanting to practice playing in front of an audience, but honestly wasn’t impressive. There was also a kids’ learning station, where they laid out tons of instruments you could touch and play (pictured below). Our kids really liked that!

We had lunch and decided to go home before it got sweltering hot again and to time the kids’ naps to the car ride. Overall we had a good time, and it would have been a great time had it not been so hot!

The History

At the time I was too distracted by little kids to really understand the location of the festival or the memorial in the corner, but as I research it now I’m finding it’s important and wanted to highlight it. I read a few articles and this one sums it up best:

“Following the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in summer 1795, relative peace prevailed between the white settlers and the natives of the Old Northwest. … Not all the frontiersmen bothered with the niceties of treaties and simply occupied Indian lands illegally. Not without reason, resentment among the tribes ran high. In 1808, Tecumseh, a Shawnee chieftain, and his brother Tenskwatawa (known to the Americans as The Prophet) launched a reform movement among their people. They attempted to end the sale of additional lands to the whites and to resist alcohol and other troublesome temptations of the competing culture. A new native settlement was built at the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers (north of present-day Lafayette, Indiana) and became known as Prophet’s Town. The village became the focal point of Tecumseh’s effort to rally the tribes east of the Mississippi River in the hope of halting the spread of white settlements. William Henry Harrison was governor of the Indiana Territory and superintendent of the Northwest Indians. Fearing the growing strength of Tecumseh’s confederacy, Harrison decided to strike quickly. He marched an army of 1,100 men along the Wabash toward Prophet’s Town. Tecumseh was temporarily out of the area on a recruiting venture among the Creeks in the south, but his brother prepared the men for battle with fiery oratory — including promises that they could not be harmed by the white men’s bullets. Shortly before dawn on November 7, 1811, Harrison’s soldiers were attacked. After a two-hour battle, the natives were forced to flee and their village — the gathering spot of the confederacy — was destroyed. Some military historians regard the Battle of Tippecanoe as a draw, but note that it held important ramifications: The safety of the white settlements in the Indiana Territory became markedly improved. The Prophet was discredited as a leader because of his inability to ensure the promised invincibility … The confederation of the eastern tribes disintegrated. The bitterly disappointed Tecumseh, who did not return to Indiana for another three months, remained an implacable foe of the American settlers. He would later become allied with the British and participate in the War of 1812. William Henry Harrison emerged with a reputation as the hero of Tippecanoe, an image that he would use to his political advantage in later years.” (U-S-History.com)

For a more detailed story with pictures, see the Warfare History Network’s article. For more about the battlefield itself and its history, see this link.

Speaking of Tecumseh and folk music, check out our favorite folk band The Tillers’ song “Tecumseh on the Battlefield”!

The Campervanning

Back to the eventful night. We were not prepared for camping in the van – we did not learn or practice anything about the van ahead of time, and so the night became a series of unfortunate mistakes. Here are a few things we learned:

• The van isn’t light proof – Our van came with shades and curtains but our kids need complete dark to sleep, so the late sunset meant late bedtimes and slightly looney children.
• The van doesn’t have AC – Duh for some reason I thought it might. Unfortunately it was 100 degrees and there is no AC without the motor running. We also didn’t bring electric fans or window/door screens, so all we had was the pop top screens. Therefore, inside the van was stifling hot.
• A pack n play doesn’t really fit – We put the pack n play for the 1 year old fit exactly in the middle of the van but it left no room for moving around IN the van.
• Bring a tent – So we sat sweltering in the van, reading stories, trying to get the kids to go to bed, until it was so miserable that Daniel took himself and the 3 year old out to the tent with the lower mattress where they promptly fell asleep.
• Bring a handheld fan – I stayed in the van with the diaper-naked baby and lay in the pop top fanning him from above with a handheld fan that thank goodness I brought. That thing comes in handy so many places!
• Bring electric fans, screen window/door covers, and windshield covers – Anything to keep the van cool. We noticed the sleeper vehicles around us all had their windows open with screens attached by magnets.
• Don’t run the fridge on battery – It will last about half a day. Around 4am an alarm went off in the van – I flew out of bed, grabbed Daniel, and we lifted the pack n play out of the van with the sleeping baby still in it and set it in the grass. It was the LP alarm on the floor and somehow my husband got it to stop beeping by turning off the fridge. After we were sure it wasn’t a real LP gas problem, we put the pack n play back in the van, baby sleeping through all of it, and got back to sleep. Later when I Googled it, we learned that the LP alarm starts beeping when the house battery is low, which we had run down with the fridge (therefore turning the fridge off gave the LP alarm the last battery juice I guess).
• Learn about the van before you camp in it the first time – some people even suggest practice camping in your driveway. I definitely learned you cannot wing it when camper vanning, at least not in 98 degree heat. Believe me, our next trip we figured out how EVERYTHING worked ahead of time and had a much better experience. Learn from our mistakes!

And there completes my first destination post. Hooray! A bit scattered I’m sure, but my writing will get better. I had a 9 week old strapped to my chest for most of writing this.