Rocky Mountain Folks Fest 2009

Wow, this has been a crazy summer, full of activities! It felt like we were just settling back into the swing of things when it came time for one of our favorite traditions: going to a folk/music festival. It was also a trip to celebrate Michael's 28th birthday, so it was extra special. This year we decided to return to the place where we had our first-ever folk festival experience: The Rocky Mountain Folks Fest at Planet Bluegrass in Lyons, Colorado. The awesome thing about that festival is that we get to see/stay with either of our two sets of aunts and uncles that live only about 1hr from Lyons. The hard part is the long drive (not too long at only 7hrs or so), but we were sure glad not to be driving at 3AM like the first time we went out.
The festival grounds are just beautiful on the Eastern side of the Rockies, and the stage is awesome. We got to see lots of great artists from Dougie MacLean (a cool Scottish singer) to Madeleine Peyroux (a sultry jazzy singer) to Gillian Welch (a true folk music artist). With 3 full days of music and eco-friendly people (they had recycling, composting, and the festival pays carbon credits or something for the carbon use to get each artist there), we were sure happy (but very tired afterward). It was nice and cool for most of the festival, with sunshine one minute and 20-30 minute micro bursts of rain the next. We only had one micro burst a day, but we were still glad for Rheid and Sherrie letting us borrow a tarp and two rain ponchos, they were lifesavers in keeping us and everything we brought dry. During the rain the festival would turn into a town of umbrellas, even the microphones had their own little ones. It sure has been a crazy cool summer this year! My aunt's tomatoes won't even turn red because of how cold and wet it has been.
One of the coolest parts of the festival was the Drepung Monks' performance. They are Tibetan monks and have the most incredible philosophies and ceremonies. Their chants are multiphonic, meaning each person makes more than one tone as they "sing". However, it's nothing like a chord on a piano, and they don't intend to make more than one tone at a time, it just happens with the way they are trained to use their "full voice" I think. It was so neat to see them and learn more about their culture and heritage (even though it was sad with everything that's been happening to their people). We even got to attend a special meditation session led by the monks, it was really neat.
This is a photo of a special creature in Tibetan folklore. If I remember right (and I might not), I believe it is thought to appear when people and animals are in harmony with their environment, kind of symbolizing peace and happiness for every living thing. Michael says the creature is a snow lion or something like that. It was an awesome dance they did with this big puppet creature, in the photo they climbed a ladder up to the stage after dancing around the crowd. It danced similar to a dog at times and even scratched its head with its foot and rolled around on its back. At the end of the dance it carried a World Peace sign around in its mouth. Needless to say, all the children paid attention to this performance.
Since the trip was for Michael's birthday, we naturally forgot it was his birthday the Saturday we were there until my aunt Sherrie reminded us - pretty silly. She was so amazing and made him birthday cupcakes (and I confess I even had a couple - I know but they were so tasty and Sherrie was so awesome I couldn't help myself). She arranged them in a 28, Michael's new age, and then we lit some candles and sang. All this at 10:30PM or so as the festival goes late. My relatives rock! We are planning to find another time we can go out and see just them, instead of just saying hi in the morning and goodnight at night like we did during the festival (sorry!). We love them SO much and we sure love Colorado too. In Colorado everyone loves their dogs like kids and loves the outdoors, we could fit right in.
Be sure to check out our other pictures in our new photo album here. Or just click the link for our secondary photo album from the list on the left.

Lovely Yellowstone 2009

Our awesome vacation in Yellowstone was really... uh... awesome! Granted it wasn't the quietest, most easy-going vacation as we had 4 children under the age of 5 along (and sometimes they weren't very happy about all of the car-rides), but it was still good nonetheless. Here we are at Idaho Falls, a mandatory stop on the way up to the gorgeous national park. Here we saw some weird weasel-looking creature, a water rat thing that fought with the weasel and then made a leap at Michael's foot, and the beautiful falls with the temple in the background.

We spent two days or so at the Old Faithful Inn, a really awesome place. We met up here with Michael's uncle Mark and his family. Mark really hates tie dye, so we just had to plan a tie dye day for our whole family just for him. We had lots of fun going on hikes around the Inn, cooking dinner in the picnic areas (that were full of mosquitoes! I got at least 20 bites, one of them between my eyes - every centimeter that wasn't covered in repellent was fair game), and just relaxing a bit in the beautiful Inn.

After Old Faithful, we spent two nights in Roosevelt cabins, where it was much colder and there were less hot springs around, but there were a lot more animals and gorgeous, green scenery. This lake is on a hike about a mile behind the cabins, our last day there Michael dragged me out of bed before sunrise so that we could hike up and back before everyone was ready to leave. It was so beautiful; the mist was coming up off of the lake and the sunrise was just perfect. It was even too cold for the mosquitoes! Up in the Roosevelt area we saw a grizzly bear (from a long distance of course), a black bear, elk, lots of bison, and a family of coyotes with two pups. It was a really awesome part of the park that I'd never been to before. From Roosevelt we drove up to Mammoth and saw a lot more of the park I'd never seen before.

Here we are hiking around a geyser/hot spring walk around the lake. The next day I bought a new hat at the gift shop, so exciting! My old one had quite a few holes, but it was a good hat. Michael and I have decided that Yellowstone is definitely one of our favorite places on earth, and we just wish we could go back soon. We went on a lot of walks/hikes and drove around taking pictures so, since I have about 300 pictures, you'll have to go here to our online album to see them all. Here are a couple of short films we took with our camera - not too spectacular, but really fun anyway. 5 days sure were fun, we just can't wait to go back and spend more time in the beautiful park.