That's just salsa coming out of my ears...

Well, we are back from our journey to the Lonestar state. Our plane was late getting in yesterday, but we finally got to Minnesota around 4:15. We met my mom and picked up the kids - who were actually quite happy to see us. It's nice to get gigantic hugs that that, and Katie even started tearing up cuz she was so happy.


I wish I could say I had a lot of pictures for you - but I don't. :) John took a few on his blackberry...but our camera got wet from the rain on Saturday and is no more. But you'll make do.

Here's some fun festival facts -
* 3 days, 8 stages, 130 bands
* 65,000 people each day
* 650 port a potties (usually a line anyway)
* 500 bartenders serving drinks (never a line for beer)

John and I on Sunday...that's mud and pooled rain water in the back...and no, I'm not wearing Green Bay colors...that's a Pearl Jam shirt. :)

Friday we got to Austin about 5:00...got our rental car....a MIGHTY Cheve Cobalt. :) Ahhh, the sarcastic power. Once we got to the hotel and dropped our stuff off, we hopped on their shuttle to take us to Zilker Park where the festival was happening. From where they dropped us off it was a little less than a mile walk to the park. The weather was gorgeous - clear sky, about 70 degrees. We caught Kings of Leon at 8:30 who brought Eddie Vedder out to do their last song. We missed Them Crooked Vultures which I am still kicking myself about. That's the new mysterious group with Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, and John Paul Jones from Led - freaking - Zeppelin. I heard it was a good show.

We slept in on Saturday then ran down to REI to get me a raincoat. I had brought trash bags and an umbrella along, but the forecast looked like rain all day, so I thought an actual coat may work better. I was SO glad to have that coat. We headed down on the shuttle and grabbed some late lunch/earl supper at a place called Chuy's. We got to sit in their hubcap room...hubcaps lined the ceiling. They had great Tex-Mex. When we left around 3:30 it was raining...and never really let up til 7:30 or so. We got to the park, bought some t-shirts and a festival poster which luckily survived in it's tube. I had wrapped the camera in a couple trash bags from the hotel - but that wasn't good enough. By the end of the night there was an inch of water in the backpack.

We caught some fun music that afternoon. Flogging Molly was a fun Irish rock group -good rain music. We also caught And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. Their name was intriguing so we had to check them out....good hard, intense rock. Bon Iver was on after that and the band seemed interesting so we wanted to check them out. Geesh - it was depressing. Maybe I would like the haunting, whispering voice curled up on my own couch, but not in the rain. So we moved on to other stages. The Levon Helm Band was on before DMB and they put on one heck of a show. For a guy that's gone through as much as Helm has - wow. They rocked. Finally Dave Matthew's Band closed out the evening - it was a fun show and we had awesome spots to stand. But thanks to the few beers I'd had - we had to head to the bathroom halfway through and watch from further back. Once it got dark, John and I didn't want to get separated. It was hard enough to get back to your spot during the day.

Sunday we wanted to get to the park early so we could get a good spot for Pearl Jam that night. Plus there were some good bands lined up. Thanks to the rain the day before there was about 2-3 inches of mud - sometimes more to tread through. It was messy, but you just had to do it. There were the occasional people covered head to toe, but most people were just mud from the knees down. We parked ourselves in front of the main stage by 3:30 to watch the Toadies and The Dead Weather before Pearl Jam at 8. The Dead Weather is Jack White's new group. It may be a bit scary, but they were VERY good.

One thing...it was HOT. The clouds cleared and the sun came out. When you are standing shoulder to shoulder in a group of about 10,000 people for 4 hours it gets to you. So by the time Pearl Jam started we had to move back a bit. I couldn't see the stage where we were anyway, and my neck was starting to hurt looking WAY up at the video screens. It wasn't just being on your feet for almost 7 hours...it was not being able to take a step in any direction or bend over. Thanks to the mud you couldn't sit down - although John and I did take turns for a couple minutes hunkering down on a trash bag. That's why festivals are only 3 days - 4 would kill people.


Peal Jam rocked though...Eddie brought out Ben Harper to do a song with and then he also brought out Perry Farrell to rock with. As an encore, Vedder jumped off the stage and dove headfirst into the mud - everyone loved that.

Don't get excitied...not my picture...we weren't this close.

Funny thing is the company that puts on the festival sodded the entire grounds earlier this summer because they'd had such problems with dust storms. This year, it rains and the grass is totally gone. The company has said that it will pay to repair the park, re-sod, whatever and it will re-open at the end of October.

Monday we got to do some touristy stuff - we went shopping at some eclectic stores and went to the Capitol. Around dusk we took our spot on the Congress bridge to watch the thousands and thousands of bats that were supposed to fly out to go hunting for the night. We waited and waited...nothing. We saw some bats - maybe 100 or so, but not what I had seen in pictures. A cab driver told us that some colder weather had settled in and that may have sent them south. (70 is not cold in my book.)

We had a good supper downtown at Maria Maria la Cantina - thanks to our combined Spanish knowledge, we knew they'd at least have beer. Got to watch the Vikings game too.

The only negative? While we were at the Capitol (for 30 minutes) our car got ticketed. We were parked there from about 5:00 - 5:30 pm....there was 45 minutes on the meter - 14 minutes left when we got back. We got a ticket saying that at 3 something we were parked there illegally. What? I blame George W.

Thanks to all our family for watching the kids while we were gone. They seem to have had a great time. And so far, no de-programming has been needed. :)