Our first, small camp-out music festival was BlissFest (www.blissfest.org) in Northern Michigan in the late '90s. I'm sure it's grown since we were there last, but BlissFest set the bar high for music festivals, in my mind. It was small enough to enjoy comfortably, yet big enough to draw great musical acts and interesting vendors. It had a nice set-up for camping and lots of families participated. Although Dan and I were not yet married, I secretly dreamed of the day we would camp for the weekend with our family at a small music festival.
Fast-forward several years: Dan and I are married and have moved to Colorado's western slope. Somehow we discovered the North Fork Bluegrass Festival in Hotchkiss, Colorado. It was PERFECT! It definitely lived up to, and even surpassed, the beauty of Bliss! We'd had Aidan by then, so "family-friendly" was high on our list of priorities. This festival had an awesome, old school playground covered in shade on the same patch of Earth as the music stage AND the food/beer garden! How awesome is THAT?!
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| Dan, Aidan, Liz, Sam, Vinnie, and Laura at the North Fork Bluegrass Festival 2007. |
We went to North Fork for two years and even managed to get several friends to join us. In 2008, we moved to Fort Collins and the festival moved further west, to Palisade. I'm sure it is a great festival, but between us moving and the change in venue, we decided not to go again. Maybe someday we'll head that way...
We have checked out a few of the other Colorado music festivals. We love the venue in Lyons; it is nice and small, but very popular and sells out fast. Telluride has incredible acts, but is getting much too big.
Now... We've found MeadowGrass! We'll be back!
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| MeadowGrass Music Festival 2013 |
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