Late Monday night Jeff + I landed back on Edmonton soil after being in Tennessee for a week for the Bonnaroo Arts + Music Festival that occurs every year on a HUGE farm out in Manchester. We attended this festival in 2011 with our seperate friend groups before we were dating -- it was over 40 degrees every single day with 100% humidity, there was no escaping the blistering heat, even in the shade, and we all swore we would never be back as the heat was just too much to handle!! But the lineup was too awesome to ignore, as soon as Jeff + I saw that Elton John and Jack White were headlining we HAD to get tickets. And oddly enough, this year the heat was not so terrible. In fact it got surprisingly chilly at night time. The days were still quite hot and the sun beat down intensely, but Bonnaroo set up way more shade tents than in 2011, and we were quite crafty when it came to using our new sarong/tapestry to create our own little pocket of shade... In 2011 we turned Bonnaroo into a roadtrip and made the 43 hour drive to Nashville, stopping in Memphis and Chicago, among other places on the way home. This year we decided to make it a shorter trip and flew instead. We arrived in Nashville last Tuesday afternoon, picked up our rental car, checked in to our hotel, and walked to downtown Nashville where we sat on a rooftop patio enjoying some drinks and basking in the sunshine. We even went back to the bar we went to last time... I still don't recall what it's called..where we ordered a couple of Bushwhackers. Now what is a Bushwhacker you may ask...? It is a delicious - and very strong - drink made up of baileys, 151 rum, half and half...and who knows what else... and it tastes like a Wendy's frosty!!
The next day we drove to Jack White's Third Man Records, went for lunch, bought all of our Bonnaroo neccessities from Walmart, discovered some cute little areas called German Town and 12 South, and finally made the hour drive to Manchester to get in the long pile up of cars driving to Bonnaroo. We left Nashville at 9pm and even though it's only an hour away, we didn't get into the farm until 5am!!! It was quite exhausting.. and we ended up getting a campsite WAY far away from the music grounds. {Click HERE to see a photo of how huge the Bonnaroo grounds are...our tent was one of the furthest ones away aha.} But we set up our tent, had a quick nap, and spent Wednesday wandering the grounds and listening to bands we'd never really heard of or listened to before...
Bonnaroo 2014 was everything we thought it'd be and MORE! We saw many, MANY talented artists such as Lionel Richie, The Avett Brothers, Arctic Monkeys, Andrew Bird, Disclosure, The Head and the Heart, Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Naked and Famous...and on Saturday and Sunday we lined up for 8-10 hours at the main stage to get SECOND ROW for both Jack White AND Elton John!
Both Jack and Elton were AMAZING!!! But Jack White was definitely my favourite show! I've wanted to see him back in the good ol' White Stripes days but never got a chance, so this was definitely a major check off of my list of to do's before I die. Jack White is so wonderfully weird, and insanely talented, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face all throughout his show if I tried. He is a musical genius. Bonnaroo 2014 was fantastic. I wonder if next year's lineup will be enticing enough to bring us back again .... :) LIKE my Facebook Page to stay tuned with more photos from our Bonnaroo trip!