Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Dukes Family Festival pictures from Hagerstown, MD

Another great Dukes event wrapped up this past weekend.  And I was there to take all kinds of pics.


Hagerstown, MD became Hazardtown for an event that included five cast members, loads of General Lees, a ton of Dukes fans, and an all around great time.


Sure the lines were long, but not that long.  Everyone could get each cast member's autograph and still have time to take in the other attractions.


Ben signed for a lot of Dukes fans.  It is becoming increasingly more difficult to get Ol' Cooter's autograph at bigger events.  These fans were happy.


James Best, with his lovely wife Dorothy, greeted fans like only Rosco can.  Kew kew kew.



Cletus and Enos also signed autographs for the fans.  Maybe someone asked Sonny to pose like Superman.  He nailed it.


Daisy also greeted her devoted fans at the event.


This guy cut animals out of wood with his chainsaw for quite sometime.  Notice he had ear protection on.  Unfortunately, all of us around him did not.



The wrestling was fun and a lot of fans enjoyed it.



There were a bunch of cars there.  Dukes and non-Dukes alike.



Here's a General Lee and a Torino from "One Armed Bandits."  It's not from Starsky and Hutch. I don't see a police light on top.








I had a set of Dukes cornhole boards once --- similar to these.  Wish mine had matching cars though.




Very cool idea.  If you're going to trailer your General, might as well paint up the truck to match.



This is just a great picture.





More tribute trucks than I've ever seen.


Uncle Jesse is rolling on 20s.


Man, I gotta get myself a General Lee golf cart.


We saw this awesome General Lee pedal car last year at Hazzard Homecoming.  Now it has an equally awesome gas pump to go with it.




This is the Bill family.  They live close to me.  I met several people from around here.  It was great to have a Dukes event so close to home.



These guys were there as well.


Not many people picked up on the fact that this is a movie Bo costume.  But some did.  And I like those people.


This impressive Dukes diaper belongs to fellow DukesCollector Craig Larson, as well as the wee little Dukes fan.  I've talked to Craig on email since the beginning of DukesCollector.com and it was great to actually meet him and his family in person.  They had a very long drive to the event.  I'm really glad they came.



There were monster trucks there promoting an upcoming Monster Jam.  Those things are really big.



Dave and Melissa DeWitt had the mobile museum there and it was, of course, a huge hit once again.


Dave was like a celebrity, even getting interviewed by the event announcer.  I hung out with Dave, his wife, and his wonderful group of friends for a majority of the event.  They are great people and I think I made some real friends.  I'm excited to hang out with these guys in the future.


"Silly" Billy Lambing is a Dukes celebrity.  He was on the reality show "Beauty and the Geek" way back when reality TV was real.  It was a lot of fun catching up with Bill and swapping Dukes stories.  Unfortunately, Bill couldn't stay too long at the show, but we'll get together again soon and have more fun, I'm sure.


The stunt show didn't go as planned.


The General Lee did do some cool burn outs, but unfortunately the engine seized and it wasn't able to make the jump.


But the Carnival of Thrills cars did not disappoint!  They "skied" this car around the entire track.  It even made the turns on two wheels.  It was very impressive.  One of the carnival cars did make the jump, but I was talking Dukes with Craig and missed it.  It got some good ewws and ahhs though.



And what Dukes event is complete without a concert by Cooter's Garage Band?  They performed another awesome show.  And I'm loving Google's new auto-animation feature.


The crew at the Hagerstown Speedway, led by Ms. Sheila Forsythe, did an excellant job planning Dukes Family Festival.  It was a great success and a lot of fun.  I heard many fans say they hope the Dukes come back to Hagerstown next year.  I would love to see that happen.