LIVE OAK, Fla. — It wasn’t the same and Sherry Millington didn’t expect it to be.

Still, Millington’s return trip earlier this month to Bethel, N.Y., for the 50th anniversary celebration of Woodstock was a memorable experience. Just like the original.

“It was wonderful,” said Millington, a Live Oak resident. “It was a great experience both times. And I didn’t go back with the anticipation of it being the same. Because that … ‘You can’t go home again.’ You can’t. It’s never going to be the same. Your memories are going to be different from what it is.

“But I certainly couldn’t have asked for it to be better. The performers were wonderful.”

Among the performers that played the anniversary celebration at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which is located on the site of the original Woodstock, were some of the original performers, including Santana and John Fogerty. Ringo Starr also performed.

While the music was great and Millington said she has always enjoyed music and going to concerts, the trip back to New York was about more than just the music.

“It was more the experience of going back,” she said. “For the same reason that I went to Vietnam and Cambodia last year. And people said, ‘Why’d you go there for?’ Because that was an extreme impact on my life at that time. Back when I was in college.

“Going back to Woodstock was kind of the same thing. Let’s experience something new in the same place. And enjoy the music and the people.”

Millington and Terri O’Neil, her best friend from high school, attended both festivals together. Millington said in 1969 they were home for summer from college when they decided along with several male friends from high school to make the trek to Woodstock.

Paying $18 for tickets for the three days, they arrived before the mass chaos began. In fact, Millington said while there was some traffic delays, they actually parked right next to their tent.

“We only stayed there the first night, then we were off into the fields and never made it back,” she said.

But despite the rain and mud and lack of food, Millington said the original Woodstock experience was wonderful as well.

“We went because we wanted to hear the music and experience it,” she recalled. “It was certainly a memorable, memorable time. No regrets. At all. Mud, lack of food, lack of bathroom facilities, at all.”

In fact, Millington said despite the conditions and the chaos that surrounded the original Woodstock, she doesn’t recall anyone at the festival that didn’t enjoy themselves.

“I’ve heard people say since then, ‘Oh, how could everybody have been happy there with all the mud and everything,’” she said. “I don’t remember ever seeing anybody there that was truly unhappy. Yes, some of the photos show people being forlorn at the end. But that was just people looking forlorn. It’s not that they were unhappy.

“It rained and people made the best of it.”

Fifty years later, organizers of the reunion made sure festivalgoers enjoyed themselves.

Millington said everything about the anniversary celebration was planned wonderfully. The museum at Bethel Woods included an additional Woodstock display for the weekend and organizers even kept the thousands in attendance safe and dry when thunderstorms moved in two of the three days.

“Of course, it’s Woodstock, you’re going to have rain,” she noted.

And through it all, Woodstock was once again a memorable and enjoyable experience.

Different, but similar at the same time.

“I would say, by and large, it was the same kind of spirit,” Millington said. “There was the spirit of giving and wanting things to go well. The musicians reinforced that. They all had their own little message. But it was all basically the same thing.

“We need to continue to work for peace, we need to continue to work for social justice and all the same things that were basically the purpose of the first Woodstock. It was more than just music.”