We had a great trip on our first ever Rocky Mountain Foray. Here is a link to my pictures. Hopefully the other guys will post theirs at some point too:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10799390@N06/sets/72157606443571057/

Here’s a quick summary of the trip:

Day one - drive 300 miles, play two sets to a nice audience at the Bluegrass Cafe in Tama, Iowa, then drive 800 miles to Denver, Colorado over night.

Day two - eat a great breakfast at Udi’s in Stapleton (finally, Colorado green chile!), crash at Ryan’s old friend Molly’s house for 4 hours of much needed sleep in the early afternoon, play a short living room set for Molly and her husband and kids, clean up and drive to CO Springs, eat a fantastic bbq meal and play three well received sets outdoors at the Front Range BBQ, before following our new friend Joe Johnson to The Ancient Mariner bar in Manitou Springs for a latenight acoustic set by the bar. Then drive an hour back to Denver to crash at our friend Cyndy Bruce’s house. Her boyfriend Tommy was an excellent host (Cyndy was stuck out of town) and gave us a great place to rest up and recharge.

Day three - chill at Tommy and Cyndy’s place all day before playing three sets at Duclinea’s Hundredth Monkey on Colfax that night. Many local and out of town friends were in attendance and we had a great night. My old school chum Pete Condon was on hand to add some excellent harmonica to Don’t Think Twice and Mountan Dew. After the show, we packed up and drove 60 minutes to Lyons, CO to setup camp in the dark at Rockygrass.

Day four - wake up to the bright Colorado sun after 3.5 hours of sleep and enter Rockygrass Festival. Hang around for several hours before playing three songs in the band contest. We didn’t place but we had a blast, and had no regrets about our lack of matching suits, or any suits at all, for that matter! Our set was very well received by the audience and though we surely could have played better than we did, considering how we got there, I’d say we did pretty well under the circumstances. The festival grounds were amazing and the band selection was fantastic. We made lots of new friends, re-connected with old ones, and had an excellent time throughout. The highlight of the festival for me was a long latenight jam session with our new friends Andy and Robin from Oregon by our campsite.

Day five - wakeup from a few hours sleep to another blazing sunny day, get a leisurely breakfast and make our way into the festival grounds for our first day of absolultely no commitments. We all enjoyed the fest in our own ways, crossing paths variously throughout the day between swimming/tubing in the river, checking out the band contest finals, enjoying the mainstage acts, shopping for gifts at the local vendors, and sampling the excellent festival chow and beer selections. It was a very nice day, the musical highlight of which was the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who fired up the crowd in a huge way and had a blast doing it. Sam Bush Band put on a great set of classic bluegrass to close out the night while Tangelweed got seriously hula-fied by my old pal Pete Condon. Sam got his friends Peter Rowan, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Mike Miller and several others to join him for a huge three-song encore that sent everybody out of the festival fully sated from a long weekend of bluegrass. Not wanting it to end, we then jammed some more in the parking lot with some new friends from Nebraska before packing up camp and hitting the road at 2 a.m.

Day six - drive 16 hours overnight and all day Monday through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, arrive home safely around 6 p.m. Sleep the sleep of the dead.