When we first arrived in Telluride we saw posters around town advertising the Ride Festival which was that weekend. Unbelievably, they had managed to get Pearl Jam to headline on the Saturday night. Even more unbelievably, there were still tickets available! In the interests of our budget we decided to just get tickets for the Saturday. Cage the Elephant were headlining on Sunday and Will and I had seen them at Reading Festival years ago, in a small tent when they had just released their first album, so we didn't feel we needed to see them again.
Like every day that we ended up having in Telluride, the Saturday of the festival was an absolute stunner. We arrived about midday and spent a lovely afternoon/early evening chilling out to the early bands. We had commandeered a blanket from our condo, and were allowed to bring a picnic in with us. A couple of early afternoon beers in the sunshine made for one very relaxed husband!
This was the perfect venue for a music festival. The town park held a maximum of only 9000 on each day. Being totally surrounded by mountains, it must be one of the most scenic venues around.
The audience was very chilled, although the fact that marijuana is legal in Colorado probably helped with that.. There was quite an impressive smoke haze at times!
Pearl Jam came on at around 7:30 in the evening and played for an impressive 2 and a half hours. They paced the show beautifully, starting off with several chilled acoustic numbers before building up to some of their heavier stuff. I suppose after more than 25 years in the business they should know how to put a good show together! There is a recap of the show
here, including videos of a couple of rare songs that were played, and also the set list. Eddie is a great raconteur, he told numerous stories throughout the night, an example of which you can hear in his prelude to '
Just Breathe', which is such a beautiful song.
There was a lovely sunset, and as night fell, things started to crank up a bit on stage.
All in all it was a brilliant show, and a real privilege to see such a huge band play such an intimate venue in such a gorgeous setting. I've been to a lot of festivals and seen a lot of bands in my time, but this one certainly stands out as a highlight.
On Sunday it was a rare opportunity to go for my first hike with Will as he had been working crazy long hours during the week. We decided to do the Bridal Veil Falls trail which takes you to the base of the big waterfall which you can see from the town.
Along the way we passed the Pandora Mill, a relic from Telluride's mining history.
It was a really nice walk, and lovely to spend so much time with Will, as I'd barely seen him during the week!
The falls were impressive. It was super loud at the base, and the force of the falls hitting the water at the bottom created a lot of spray which got us pretty soaked! It was actually quite refreshing in the heat.
The pic below almost looks like it has had some sort of arty effect applied to it, but the truth is the camera lens just got a bit wetter than it maybe should have!
So, that was our memorable middle weekend. Will spent his second week in Telluride in a similar way to his first with plenty of hard work. I also spent mine in a similar way to my first with lots and lots of hiking in the hills.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home