The Gorge Amphitheather - and Dave Matthews!

The Gorge Amphitheater is a huge outdoor concert venue nestled along the Columbia River in the very middle of Washington state. The venue is unique and striking. Given our shared affinity for Dave Matthews, his love for playing at the Gorge, and the perfect timing, it was too good to pass up - Drew, Maddie, Jenna and I spent Labor Day weekend camping there and heard DMB play three shows.

Panoramic view of The Gorge before the Friday concert

The camping area: a sea of tents

We took some time to plan our meals and packing, learning lessons from Yellowstone. We made grocery store runs, stocked up on supplies, and packed the van to the ceiling: our camping pass would only allow one car in, so we all piled in the van. It was effectively loaded to the brim when we left on Thursday evening.

I have found along the way that for many places, I don't even have time to think about what to expect before we show up somewhere. And that was certainly the case here: this concert weekend is an all-in weekend for some people, and we had no idea what to expect. We thought we were prepared but realized quickly that others were veterans: people brought trailers, RVs, huge patio covers, tables, grills, kites, and even slip-n-slides. It was an event, an adventure, and a spectacle. Many people decorated their belongings accordingly:

Honeymoon with DMB (...?)

The days were long and hot; many people played football or frisbee, or just walked around. Standard attire for most was a bathing suit: anything more was optional. We passed time by cooking, doing crosswords, and especially by reading: I finished both Michael Pollan's Cooked and Cheryl Strayed's Wild that weekend. Saturday was both VT and UVA's first football games, and Drew streamed both games on his iPhone. For this, we devised a MacGyver-ed shade-tarp and power-strip-charging experiment that worked out.

There were other "this would only happen at the Gorge" experiments as well, including Drew and Maddie's fairly successful attempt at making solar nachos.

The concerts were incredible - I ate up every minute of them. Though the openers were average, Dave Matthews played three totally different, good shows. Friday night was a slightly sub-par warm up kind of show. Saturday night was a really great slower, mellow, very improvisational show (including encore, they played from 8:30 until almost midnight.) Sunday night was an upbeat, diverse, great closing show. It was truly a treat to hear those guys play so much.

Though I loved the music, the camping there was an atmosphere pretty different from our generally law-abiding, peaceful, early-to-bed and early-to-rise camping life. The experience of this kind of music festival was a great one to have, but one that was exhausting given the context of the trip (and because our neighbors were particularly unruly.) I don't know how many more music festivals I'll go to in the future - but I'm glad I checked it off my list!