Telluride Bluegrass Festival

We had a great trip and were so glad that we took advantage of the opportunity to go.  It really could not have worked out any better for us.  The festival was awesome and the folks at Planet Bluegrass had a well-oiled machine.  I never felt overwhelmed by a crowd or stressed with will call, camp set up, the shuttle, etc.  It by no means felt like we were amongst 10,000 people.  The camping locations were spread out, yet the campsites were close quarters; however, this was not a problem at all.  Everyone there was on the same schedule and just there to enjoy the festival.  We were next to a creek that you could, if you so desired, take a quick dip for a bath and/or to cool off (mind you the creek was filled with melt off from the mountains and I didn't dare test it out, but many did).  They had a water pump and plenty of port-a-johns at our site, as well as everywhere else.  The festival was awesome and so were the other festivarians for the most part.

We got into Telluride Friday afternoon about 3:30 and set up camp and just relaxed at the tent.  Our neighbors had an easy-up and were super friendly (even gave us a thermos full of mimosas on Saturday).  We were fortunate to get to use their shade as needed.  It was around 80 degrees on Friday but when the sun when down it got chilly fast.  We slept okay, but I was kind of cold that first night despite having flannel sheets and fleece blankets and pants on... I think our low was in the 30s for sure.

Saturday was beautiful.  We woke up early, though didn't necessarily get an early start.  Either way we rode our bikes into town, camp was about 4 miles from Town Park and we had easy access to a bike path.   The elevation made the ride quite a challenge but I was glad for the exercise.  We got our tickets for the festival at will call and headed in to lay out our tarp.  K wanted to do the tarp run but we didn't make a huge effort to make that happen.  Regardless, we were able to find a spot about halfway back to the left of the stage and just up from the port-a-johns in the back.  We did our souvenir shopping while there was no crowd. (SOOO glad we went ahead and did that because the line was a mile long the rest of the day!)  The music was so great and continuous, even between sets they had other bands play a couple songs and I'm pretty sure they were playing previous nights' shows as well on the speakers.  Imelda May was a great surprise and we both really enjoyed her sound.  Jerry Douglas had Sam Bush and Bela Fleck sit in with him and Yonder also had Sam Bush on stage.  I don't think the temperature got over 75 but without a cloud in the sky, we did feel like we were baking for a couple hours; however, not to an extent that we did not totally enjoy the day!  We had plenty of snacks and beverages as well.  All in all, I am so very glad we got to go and would definitely want to try and go back.  The six hour drive is beautiful and well worth it.  Doing it by spending money on only one-day festival pass and camping made it a pretty affordable trip.  Maybe next year we'll have some friends join us!!