The scene at the main stage upon arrival into the venue which in this case is Wilkes Community College in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. It is Thursday afternoon and the crowd has already set a record. This festival is growing leaps and bounds. The food tent alone is huge. There are rows and rows of vendor tents, a special tent for t-shirts and cds, as well as a whole tent just for instrument sales. Multiple stages across many acres of beautiful green grass set in the edge of the Blue Ridge mountains, I have arrived for quite a cool adventure.
Here are the links to a couple of newspaper articles estimating the four day crowd at Merlefest to be 76,000. The third highest attendance for this event.
http://www.salisburypost.com/Lifestyle/050910-Merlefest-main
http://www.highcountrypress.com/weekly/2010/05-06-10/merlefest-2010-among-top-three.htm