After our camping trip to Lake Tahoe, we were home for a whopping two days before heading out again to our next adventure. This time our destination was Spirit West Coast, a 3-day Christian music festival at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey. Having gone to Woodstock '99 in New York for the 30th anniversary of that music festival, I can't honestly conjure a valid comparison of the two, but I suppose it's the closest thing in relation.
We've been attending SWC for years now, starting when the girls were little toddlers. At first we just drove down for Saturday and drove home afterwards. A couple of years later we drove down for Thursday and Saturday, coming home each night and taking Friday as a recovery day. A few years ago, we tried out staying in a hotel down there and going all three days and the next year we stayed in an even closer hotel. Last year was going to be the year where we took the leap and finally camped out around the racetrack itself, fully immersing ourselves in the festival experience. Unfortunately, last year's festival was canceled at the last minute due to lack of funds, and although our money was refunded in full, we were sad to miss our chance at camping and being involved in every aspect of one of our favorite events.
SWC is currently planning to do an every-other-year event in Monterey, alternating with the one in San Diego. It was too costly for them to do both each year and since Monterey was canceled last year, it was going to get its turn this year. So, once again I logged onto the website first thing in the morning on the day camping reservations became available to ensure us a spot in the Premium orange camping area. It's a tough walk in the middle of the night up out of the pits (ha! get it?) of the raceway to the campgrounds around the perimeter, and there was no way I was going to make it any worse than it had to be.
Our camping pass came in the mail a couple of weeks before the event and I was glad to see we had landed the Orange campsite. Unfortunately, in all the hullabaloo of this summer, I forgot to buy our actual entrance passes to the concerts, so we'll have to do that when we get there. Oops! At least I did the important part.
I had heard that people line up for hours before the gates open at 4pm to secure the best camping spots, but I was too exhausted and unprepared for this trip after our recent camping in Tahoe, so there was no way I was going to stress myself out by trying to get there that early. We actually got to the campground at 5pm, which I was pretty happy with, and we found the camping area easily. Thinking about the festival for the last couple of days, I was getting a little worried about my ability to pull this off by myself since Jessey didn't come with us this time, and I wondered if camping with the girls at the festival would really be a good idea at all. Apparently my recovery period wasn't quite long enough this time.
After driving and walking around the campsite a couple of times, we finally settled on a space that we thought would work well for us, and I started feeling a little better about this whole thing. We were only about 20 minutes from town, and the weather was so nice and cool this week so being in a spot without shade was not going to be a problem.
The 20' x 20' square that would be our home for the next 4 days
Our area all setup.
The squares were marked off with orange paint at each of the corners. Our square was on the corner of a row, so we had one row of cars and tents behind us, but there was a fire lane in front of us and also to the left, leaving us with lots of elbow room. You can't tell from the photo, but it was exceptionally windy up there. We watched several tents blow away and blow over as their owners chased them across the lot. Luckily I had three other pairs of hands to hold the tent still while I staked it. If our tent can last through this weekend unscathed, I'll be very impressed. The wind was relentless as I tried to stake it down. The extremely hard-packed dirt didn't make my job any easier and I had to move the stakes around again and again to find a spot I could even drive them into. I bent a couple of them a little bit, but in the end I managed to secure them all except for one corner one that wouldn't go in no matter what I did. We setup the table and chairs in the space between the car and the tent, providing a little bit of a wind block for us while we ate and relaxed.
Cars and tents were packed together in two back-to-back rows with fire lanes making aisles between them
No flushy toilets for us this weekend. Just rows of port-a-pottys. But they cleaned and stocked them every day, so they were in really good shape all the time. Definitely not like Woodstock.
The girls made friends right away with the other kids in the campground. Two kids about the girls' ages (Grace and Gabriel) were riding down the hills in their Radio Flyer wagon and immediately caught K's eye. We were sure they were going to break their necks, but they managed to escape with just a few scratches and bruises. The campsite one over and one up from ours had three teenagers, one of which would be the girls' other close friend this week. Her name was Bailey and the girls absolutely loved hanging out with her and some of her teen-aged friends.
We had gone straight to the campsite when we got to Monterey because we were concerned we might get a really bad campsite there. I'm actually glad we did because we got one of the last couple of spaces that had semi-level ground and was in the area closest to the front entrance gates of the raceway. But now that we were all setup, we needed to head back into town to pick up some last minute groceries and some gas. There's really only one road up and down the hill and it's a long, winding road. On the drive down, I noticed this sign. I'm not sure what they've got going on up on that hill, but it definitely has nothing to do with racing cars.
By the time we headed back up the hill, it was getting dark. I made dinner while the girls played Parcheesi with Bailey and then we all headed in the tent to read for a while before going to sleep. The festival begins tomorrow and I'm pretty excited!
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