Fare Thee Well

We spent the month of May working at festivals. After Suwannee River Jam, we worked Hangout in Gulf Shores, AL and StrangeCreek in Greenfield, MA.

Hangout was an easy set-up because the festival did most of the work. They had booths already set up for us and all we had to do was haul in our equipment. We were right in front of the BMI stage so we got to catch all the acts on that stage which included The Districts, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Natural Child. Natural Child had this one great song that was like "I don't want to fuck you, but I got to" and I can't find out the name of it. So if anybody knows... comment below. :) Overall, Hangout was a fun festival to work. There's no camping so our boss got us a sweet condo with like five pools, a game room, jacuzzis, and all that jazz. Our crew definitely took advantage of all the amenities. I probably wouldn't pay to go to Hangout, because I think camping is half the experience of a music festival, but it was really cool how it was right on the beach! There are so many babes and boobs at this festival because everyone is in their bathing suit. Our booth was between the two main stages, so we got to listen to some of the bigger acts. My favorite was definitely Beck, on the last night. We had started to break down our booth a little bit towards the end of his set and I was scrubbing a smoker to "I got a time bomb, ticky ticky ticky tick." It was awesome.

Zach and his beef tips!

For StrangeCreek, the next festival we worked, we had to haul it up to Greenfield, Massachusetts. It was a 26 hour drive!! Luckily, we got to stop in Ocean City and visit with Kyle's family for about 10 hours. Not much time to relax, but we made the best of it. Kevin's mom made us crabs, because you can't go to OC without eating crabs! StrangeCreek is a smaller festival, with around 8,000 in attendance. It is put on by Wormtown Trading Co., which is an event planning and retail company. If you've been to a festival chances are you've seen them selling rocks, tapestries, and beads. I loved the location for this festival--- a little farm that totally felt like we were at Woodstock or something. I believe this was the farthest north I've ever been and it was definitely colder than I imagined. We worked the nightshift and around 4:00am, it was cold! I was nervous about working the nightshift, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. There was a giant communal fire across from our booth, which kept us pretty busy until around 5:00am. On top of the giant, warm fire the stand next to us had a PUPPY!! My luck doesn't stop there! Throughout the weekend, I got to serve Zach Deputy beef tips multiple times and catch a little bit of two of his sets! What a weekend!!

The Spring Fling Crew!

From there, we made it down to Spring Fling in North Carolina, which is a family/friend camping trip my parents and their friends put on. The camping spot they picked this year was AWESOME! We were getting there in the dark and we were very uncertain if we were going the right way. We had no cell service, so we couldn't call anyone there, and the roads were all gravel. It just wasn't looking too promising, but sure enough we found their site. It was nestled in the Cherokee National Forest along the North River. We had a group of 16. At these shindigs, someone is responsible for each meal, so there's always plenty of dank food. We had our mountain bikes, so we took them out a lot throughout the weekend. We saw a baby black bear on one of our rides, both of our first bear sighting. We knew to keep going though 'cause the momma was probably around too! We found a really nice area in the river to sunbathe and swim. We also found out that the Donley Cabin was not far away. This little cabin is available for reservation for $35/night and is about .25 miles from the gravel road. It was a cool thing to stumble upon. One day we drove to the nearby town of Robbinsville to canoe on Lake Santeetlah. It was only $10 an hour to rent canoes at Deyton Camp. We paddled up to a few campsites that you could only access via the water, which would be a fun trip to do sometime. Overall, the weekend was filled with good foods, catching up, and time in the great outdoors.

Heading into Red Rocks wearing our Lettuce ponchos.

From there we spent a few nights in Georgia, packing up my car to head out west to settle down for awhile. We made our classic midway stop in Columbia, MS, where Kyle has family. We had a little mishap the morning we left when Kyle left his wallet, which has both our everything in it, on the trunk of my car. The wallet flew off as we were driving down the highway before we noticed. We backtracked and luckily found the wallet and all the cards that had been strewn about the highway. Road trip nightmare! Since then, we have been battling a chipped credit card and a broken National Park pass. We couldn't resist stopping in Denver, Colorado for our first Red Rocks show! Lettuce and The Motet, two amazing instrumental funk bands, happened to be playing as we were passing through. So we called up our friend, Emma, who lives in the area and has been to her fair share of Red Rocks shows, to escort us to our first one EVER! Both us girls had birthdays coming up, so we decided to celebrate the night of the show. The skies on June 5th looked dark and grey, which wasn't surprising considering that there was a freak hail storm the night before. The rain starting coming down right as we were heading in and people were turning back saying "they called it, they called it." We were not giving up that easily! We stood there in the rapids that the stairs had become in our Lettuce ponchos that I had made until they let us in. The weather cleared up perfectly and not another drop was shed from the sky. We somehow stumbled into the V.I.P section and had very front row for The Motet. They spent some time squeegeeing off the stage and leaf-blowing the equipment to dry everything, but then it got FUNKY! The Motet covered Jungle Boogie by Kool and the Gang and everybody lost it!! We raged it in front row for The Motet and got back in the stands for Lettuce. Either view is incredibly spectacular. I understand why Red Rocks is considered one of the most spectacular venues. When you're up close you see the backdrop rock, which looks like a tie-dye tapestry with all the lights on it. From far away, you can see the city lights of Denver twinkling in the distance. They look like tiny specks of glitter. There are two giant red rocks on either side of the stands, encompassing the whole amphitheater and causing the sound to reverberate and bounce in different directions. These rocks look like giant marsh mellows. The moon was out, as if the night wasn't already celestial enough. Lettuce was getting so galactic! I was frolicking up and down in the large concrete stands--- dancing and twirling, letting my hot pink negligee robe flap in the wind. It was a blast! Parking and getting home from Red Rocks can be tricky. Luckily, our friend's dad drove us and we all hopped in an Indian guy's van with 6 other stranded hippies after the show. We all made it home.

We shot up to the Vail area, where Emma lives, because the GoPro Games were going on. We were pretty beat after raging at Red Rocks, but we went for a couple hours and caught some amazing slack liners. Then we passed out at Emma's for like 14 hours until the next morning. Before trekking the rest of the way across the country, we stopped to visit a couple friends and the Edwards Freedom Skatepark, which has a beautiful mountain backdrop. During the snow season, it is transformed into a terrain park by skiiers and snowboarders.

Hanging out with Anna and Natalie in Golden Gate Park. 

Our original plan was to post up in Oregon, but there was nothing available in the town we had our hearts set on: Hood River. It's more of a summer town, so we are hoping more things open up in the fall. For now, we got a studio month-to-month in South Lake Tahoe. Our spot is siiiiiick--- so close to the lake, sports fields, a pool, a library, a bike trail, a tennis court, a skatepark. Tahoe is so beautiful in the summer and I am itching to get out and explore the trails that lead to a multitude of tarns. I wanted a word for mountain lake, so I looked it up and that's a tarn. In addition to Lake Tahoe, there are tons of tiny lakes tucked away in the mountains--- or tarns. I never knew that until I came here. I always thought it was just Lake Tahoe. Before we got to explore much, we went to San Francisco for a couple weeks. We miraculously got to meet up with our friends, Anna and Natalie. We hung out with them in Golden Gate Park for a little bit. Then our other friends, Phil and Ryan, were out here from St. Augustine, FL and they stayed with us for a bit!! I love running into friends so far from home. I spent my 21st birthday in SF! Woohoo, finally 21! I can go to 21+ shows now, so exciting. For my birthday, we went down to Haight Street and I got some fabric from a heady art store called Mendel's.

Have to stop by these beautiful stairs on 17th
avenue whenever I'm in SF!! See previous posts
for info. 

We went back to Amoeba Records and my dad funded the purchase of a few for my birthday: Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, Funkadelic's Cosmic Slop,  and Zappa's Apostrophe and Ship Arriving Too Late to Save A Drowning Witch. After some time hanging out in San Fran, we went to Santa Cruz for a couple days and surfed. We went to a spot called Pleasure Point. This was probably only my 5th time surfing. I made it past the breakers and all the kelp stuff that's creepy, but my arms get so tired after the paddle out! I'll get there. We moseyed around downtown and browsed in Streetlight Records. It's crazy being back in these record shops so soon after our road trip and finally being able to buy stuff!! At Streetlight, we got Meat Puppet's Mirage, Bad Brain's Omega Sessions, and a live Blowfly record. Blowfly is this old rapper that is super raunchy, but he was playing at Nobby's (a local St. Augustine, FL bar) the night Kyle and I fell in loooooove. I wrote about it in my blog when we were on the road trip and about how we couldn't buy it, but we got it!! Things come full circle. We haven't brought our record player or collection out here yet, but plan on getting it when we get Kyle's truck... going to be out here for a little bit!!

600+ Jell-O shots were made for the Fare Thee Well lot in Santa Clara, CA. 

We were glad to be back "home" in Tahoe. We celebrated my birthday with sushi at Off the Hook with a gift card Gussie and Tommy gave us. We got Sake and they hooked it up with a dessert for my birthday. PINA COLADA CHEESECAKE. I love Pina Coladas... This place had phenomenal sushi and a super nice staff. I recommend!! Every Thursday, walking distance from our apartment is an event called "Live at Lakeview." There's a beer garden, live music, and it all takes place on the shores of the lake. We checked it out for a bit, but couldn't stay long because we had 300 Jell-O shots to make for the Fare Thee Well lot in Santa Clara, CA the next day. For those of you not on planet earth, Fare Thee Well is supposed to be the Dead's final shows where everyone is playing together, with Trey Anastasio from Phish on guitar subbing for Jerry. It's a historical moment in the music community, consider how much the Grateful Dead has impacted the scene.

Crew on lot at Fare Thee Well.

We apparently got really lucky with parking. We ignored the signs in front of neighborhoods that said "No Event Parking," because can they really even do that? Then we stumbled upon a trail through a park and over a bridge that pooped us out right near the lots, which cost $60 to park in!! No one messed with our cars either. It was a solid spot and we did the same thing the next day. We rocked the lot with our Jell-O shots, made a few quick hundos and turned around and bought $30 tickets. The show took place in a stadium, so the seats were kind of nose bleeds. It was a bit weird seeing the Grateful Dead in a stadium. I felt like I should have been dancing barefoot in a field. We just wandered for most of the show, watching from different vantage points the entire time. The first night was supppppper spaced out and if you ask me they were only playing drums the whole time, haha. Even though we got home late that night, we still made 300 more Jell-O shots. We straight killed it. The second night we got tickets for only $20 a pop! It's unbelievable considering the face value on these tickets were more than $100 and some people paid HUNDREDS of dollars to get in. The second night felt like they played more actual songs instead of just jamming and getting spacey. Honestly, I'm not a huge Grateful Dead fan, but I am very GRATEFUL (see what I did there?) that I was able to witness history. After the last show, we drove back to SF. The next day, we skated to the beach and found ourselves back on Haight Street. There are just too many head shops, vintage clothing stores, and record stores not to go back more than once. I ended up getting some cool sparkly tights from this shop called Piedmont Boutique. This eclectic shop has the funkiest clothes that are all handmade in San Francisco. You don't see that very often anymore, truly a unique place. We also visited the Grateful Dead's house on 710 Ashbury Street to say one final Fare Thee Well. Kyle lost his glasses (shame, shame), so we made a quick trip on the Muni to get more glasses from See... always gotta support small, rad businesses! He settled on a classic tortoise shell pair.

Final Fare Thee Well @ the Grateful Dead's house.

Finally, we made our way back to Tahoe. We've got big plans for the month of July!! My first roommate/best friend/Gemini sister, Rachel, is coming to visit in two weeks. We get to show her our stomping grounds and I am beyond excited. We plan to visit the Redwoods again, see the Oregon coast for the first time, check out some more of Oregon including Portland and the Phish shows in Bend, do Phish at Shoreline, and Meat Puppets in SF. 'Til she gets here, Kyle and I are working on some artisan crafts to sell on the upcoming Phish lots. See you there!!