Tour Day 11 – Oasis of Love, Raystown Lake – Seven Points Amphitheater

Tour 2023 is over half-way complete boys and squirrels! It never seems real. Both singers and sponsors spend an entire year prepping for tour just to have it flit away. I honestly feel like it just started. Everyone had spent the weeks and months before tour making preparations of some sort. Saving money for tour, doing fundraisers, preparing music, getting stuff ready at work, hiring house sitters all to have this mind-blowing experience, and it’s over as soon as it began.

It seems so weird when we get to this point in tour because are already setting the foundation for what tour 2024 will be. The first block that needs to be placed is the election of the coming year’s officers. We had our initial information meeting where this year’s officers and the sponsors get a chance to explain what it means to accept a leadership position in New G. There are 13 formal leadership position in New G. We have four officers (President, Vice President, Membership Secretary, and Treasurer) and nine executive committee delegates. When we have that meeting I always feel like I have this moment of disbelief, a “this can’t be happening already, can it?” moment.

The rest of the day was filled with nature, which you can imagine is something everyone is craving after their time in the city. First, we went to a scenic overlook that looked out on Raytown Lake. You could see for over 6 miles of beautiful Appalachian topography. After we saw the top of those mountains, we went inside one! It was a short bus ride to Lincoln caverns where we squeezed through passages in the rocks to reveal gigantic rooms full of stalactites and stalagmites.

The day of nature was topped off by one of the group’s favorite performances, seven points amphitheater. It is a wooden pavilion overlooking Raytown Lake, and from the singers’ perspective they can look deep into the hills – a truly inspiring vantage point. We had people from the town and people who were just staying at the camp and wandered over to see what was going on (and even a couple of surprise family members show up from STJ). It’s really is a tour favorite, but it also marks the beginning of the end. With that performance down we only have one more performance before homecoming.

So, here we come folks. Tomorrow starts the real trip home.