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

MICHAEL HILL

Beverly “Cookie” Grant hitchhiked to the Woodstock music festival in 1969 without a ticket and slept on straw. Ellen Shelburne arrived in a VW microbus and pitched a pup tent.

Fifty-five years later, the two longtime friends finally got back to the garden, but this time in high style.

The women, now 76, were recently treated to a two-bedroom glamping tent at the upstate New York site equipped with comfy beds, a shower, a coffee maker and Wi-Fi. No mud from drenching rains this time. They sat in pavilion seats to watch shows by Woodstock veterans John Fogerty and Roger Daltrey.

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

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the not-for-profit organization that runs the site, rolled out the tie-dyed carpet for Grant and Shelburne to promote its new glamping facilities and to delve deeper