Thanks Bob.
One of many reasons for wanting to do this came from something I witnessed several years ago. We were rafted out on the Delta in our boat with 50+ other boats, and our current Music Director was playing banjo and singing in the cockpit of his boat, entertaining 50-100 people who "drove in" by inflatable dinghy. I told him a couple of days ago "that's something I want to do before I leave this Earth", and his response was "you'll do it long before then".
The banjo was the ideal instrument to entertain the crowd in the open air without amplification.
I'm really a long way from being ready to "progress to another instrument", but feel it's a natural extension of playing the banjo ukulele. However, chord shapes for a banjo tuned to CGBD are quite different from the standard ukulele (and banjo uke) GCEA tuning. This is going to be a mental and physical (muscle memory) challenge. An added challenge is that the banjo is typically played over a wider range of the fretboard than a ukulele.
That video shows how talented Gunhild Carling is. The closest I've seen to that is Dolly Parton at one of her concerts at the Arco Arena; Her range of talents and the number of different instruments she played was quite amazing.
Though it always depressed me a bit when an accomplished player picked up whatever horn I had and played it tons better than me.
I know exactly how that feels, and experience it every time I'm with my friend, the Music Director. He taught himself to play the uke after I sent him a "please buy a uke and come teach me" email while he was on vacation in Maui. He did all the above, and showed up at our door the following week, and immediately got me past first base, after I'd been struggling for a month to strum chords.
I have no idea if this is going to work out, but I was given another incentive when we visited our son and DIL near Columbus earlier this year. That's when I found out this KY girl comes from a musical family of guitar, banjo, drums and brass players. Practicing my uke at their place was the catalyst for her to buy another (used) banjo and take lessons from her banjo teacher brother via Skype.
The attached photo is merely a pose.