Ok, I’ve seriously been working on these posts in half hour increments for like a week now…HERE IS PART ONE!
So I can officially cross another item off my 30 Before 30 list! From May 23 – 28, Husbie and I went to the Sasquatch! Music Festival in Washington with my Bestie and her man and we had an absolute BLAST. Our original plan this year was to take a trip down to Las Vegas, the Hoover dam and the Grand Canyon, but the lineup at Sasquatch was just too good to miss, and I have never been to a music festival before!
We set off on Thursday and drove all the way from Edmonton, AB through British Columbia and Idaho to Washington via the Crowsnest Highway (95). We packed the Rav4 with two tents, bedding, coolers, clothing, camping chairs and all the other camping paraphernalia required for 4 people (ever played “Pack-The-Car Tetris” before?), and the gentleman drove while the ladies got cozy in the nest of pillows, blankets and other soft things in the back seat. We saw sunshine, rain and even SNOW before we crossed the border to the States. Idaho was full of beautiful lush green valleys in between ranges of foothills, dotted with small towns and farms, with some seriously gorgeous lakes and reflections of puffy white clouds. It was probably my favorite part of the road-trip scenery wise!
Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho (pic by my Bestie)
We each contributed about 7 hours worth of music to a mega-playlist to keep ourselves entertained. The full playlist ended up being about 28 hours long, which was just about perfect for the 13ish hours it took us to drive there and back, each way! The playlist was my Bestie’s idea, and it definitely made the trip more enjoyable. I highly recommend this if you’re traveling long distances this summer. Putting the playlist on “shuffle” ensures that everyone’s songs get played, and the music is already chosen! We even took it one step further and played a game for the first little bit guessing who put each song on the playlist. We gave up on that game pretty quickly!
My choices were fairly obvious considering I packed it full of classic tunes from ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, Counting Crows, Queen, Hootie & The Blowfish, Led Zeppelin, R.E.M. and other artists my parents forced us to listen to in our youth, that I can’t help but love now (gets me all nostalgic)!
We stayed in a hotel on Thursday night in Spokane, and then got up bright and early on Friday to get our groceries and drive the remaining 2 hours and 20 minutes to the Gorge Amphitheater near George, Washington!!
The festival itself was amazing. We paid for Premier Camping which was SO WORTH IT. We were in a fenced off area and got lucky enough to be beside the back fence overlooking the gorge and the festival grounds. We had access to free showers and outhouses that were cleaned every morning (I’ve heard general camping was not as lucky with the cleanliness). We were surrounded by Canadians who were there to have a good time but also to get a decent amount of SLEEP.
On day one we explored the festival grounds and sat at the main Sasquatch! stage for a while, in awe of the stunning view. It’s really the most beautiful festival venue I’ve ever been to. How can it not be with a background like THAT?! It felt like a mini Grand Canyon!
We saw ZZ Ward and Reign Wolf perform on the main stage and then bounced between the other four stages to see Japandroids, Telekinesis, a few songs from Youth Lagoon (after they ran seriously late with a 45 minute long setup and sound check), Vampire Weekend and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis!
We got to take in an amazing sunset as Youth Lagoon continually fiddled with their sound setup for 45 minutes. Since they started so late we could only stick around for a few of their songs because we wanted to get a good spot for Vampire Weekend!
Vampire Weekend is one of those unique bands that I enjoy more than most because every single song makes me happy. I can listen to their full albums on repeat any day. The crazy bright white light to the right was the full moon shining on us as we danced and jumped and sang along to every song!
After a quick stop over at Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (I just really really wanted to hear Thrift Shop, Same Love and Can’t Hold Us), we headed to bed.
One thing that we did not anticipate was how intensely cold it gets at night. I ended up wearing socks, two pairs of layered leggings, a tank and a sweater to bed every night just to stay remotely warm! I also slept with earplugs due to the 2:30am rave parties that we could hear occurring not too far away in general camping…that didn’t stop until the sun was rising. People be CRAY-ZAY at music festivals!
Stay tuned for PART TWO!
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