Back to Woodstock, with WiFi: Women return after 55 years to glamp and relive the famous festival

BETHEL, N.Y. (AP) — Beverly “Cookie” Grant hitchhiked to the Woodstock music festival without a ticket in 1969 and slept on straw. Ellen Shelburne arrived in a VW microbus and set up a pup tent.

Fifty-five years later, the two old friends finally returned to the garden, but this time in high style.

The women, now 76, were recently treated to a two-bedroom glamping tent in upstate New York, equipped with comfy beds, a shower, coffee maker and Wi-Fi. This time no mud due to soaking rain. They sat in pavilion chairs to watch shows by Woodstock veterans John Fogerty and Roger Daltrey.

“We’re like hippie queens!” Grant joked during breakfast during the trip earlier this month.

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the nonprofit organization that manages the venue, rolled out the tie-dyed carpet for Grant and Shelburne to promote their new glamping facilities and delve deeper into Shelburne’s trove of generational photos. defining festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969.

The once trampled hill near the main stage is now a manicured green space near a Woodstock-and-’60s-themed museum and concert pavilion. But the return visit still brought back a flood of memories. Shelburne was able to trace the steps she took as a 21-year-old student in the photos taken by her then-boyfriend and future husband, David Shelburne.

“I look at this person in the photo, who is me, but someone who has just started life at that age. And now I look back on kind of the bookends of my life,” Ellen Shelburne said. “All these decades later, I’m back at Woodstock and it brings it all home in such a positive way.”

Grant and Shelburne did not know each other in August 1969 and attended the concert separately.

Shelburne came from Columbus, Ohio, with David Shelburne, his best friend, and another woman. They bought tickets, got there early and bought ponchos from a local store after rain was forecast. She slept in a pup tent.

“I have never been cold, wet, hungry, muddy, dirty, uncomfortable or miserable,” she said. “It was completely the opposite.”

Grant went to Woodstock on a lark.

A long-haired surfer she knew, Ray, came up to her and a friend on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and said, “There’s a music festival going on in New York. Want to hitch a ride with me?” Grant’s friend dropped out along the way, but she and the surfer made it to the town of Bethel. The last driver dropped them off at the edge of the huge traffic jam outside the festival and gave them a blanket.

Grant walked the last few miles to Woodstock barefoot.

Both women were impressed by Jimi Hendrix, The Who and other musical acts, as well as the good atmosphere of the more than 400,000 people who gathered at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, about 80 miles northwest of New York City.

“If we needed food, someone would feed us. Someone would give us water. We didn’t need anything,” Grant said.

The two women met months later in Columbus, where they each ran stores next to Ohio State University with the men they went to Woodstock with. And they all married their concertmates, although Grant divorced several years later.

David and Ellen Shelburne ran a film and video production company together until he died four years ago. Grant moved to Florida and eventually became a chef on megayachts before starting her own company supplying crews for those big boats.

Each woman held a spark of the Woodstock spirit. Shelburne said she is “stuck in the 60s and proud of it.” Last year, they got the bug to return to the festival site after giving oral histories in Columbus to curators at the Bethel Woods museum.

Just like in 1969, the women got everything they needed during their recent long weekend of peace, love and nostalgia – although this time it was a ‘luxury 2 bedroom safari tent’ with a front deck and a shower in a bathroom. And when it rained this time, they were able to stay dry in the museum.

On a sunny Saturday, Bethel Woods senior curator Neal Hitch drove the women around in a golf cart to explore the sites where David Shelburne took his festival photos. Unlike others who pointed their cameras at the stage, he documented festival goers camping, swimming, selling goods, relaxing and having fun. Hitch noted that David Shelburne’s images are also valuable because they are sequenced, meaning they tell a story.

At one point, Shelburne stood near a tree line holding a photo of a field full of campers. She stood where her late husband took the photo and looked at the same field 55 years later, minus the campers. Visibly moved, she said “oh” several times and took a deep breath before exclaiming, “Wow!”

It broke her heart that her husband wasn’t in the photos, but she felt his presence that weekend.

The women traveled across the festival grounds for several days, from the stage to the forest where vendors had set up their stalls. Despite the changes — the luxurious tents, the fences, the museum — the women said they recognized the same gentle, friendly atmosphere here that they experienced as 21-year-olds.

And they loved revisiting it decades later.

“It’s really nice to see that it’s in history forever,” Grant said, “and we’re a part of that.”