Oh Seattle kids, and your many layers of clothing. Your many many bags, and copious accessories. In many ways, Capitol Hill is like a rain-soaked Bedouin village, kids rambling between ramshackle houses covered in amazing art, listening to bands and drinking PBR. Our Sasquatch team (consisting of Justin and Robyn from amazing indie music blog Ca Va Cool, myself, and two lovely ladies along for the ride to the Space Needle) leaves Vancouver on Friday afternoon. We stop at the apartment of my friend Sarah, appointed with a fireplace, a giant shark-marionette, and a vintage map of France. Sarah takes us for PBR pints and vegan delights at Highline (210 Broadway E)-wraps, burgers, and even a vegan Reuben sandwich. Located in an old “bro” club, which the waiter informs us used to house a jet ski, the place is huge, the food is amazing, and the people-watching doesn’t suck-adorable tattooed kids wrapped up in all kinds of toques and flannel, wheeling into the place on their fixies. “People in Seattle actually ride those!” cries Justin. “You can, if you want to be mercilessly made fun of,” Sarah retorts. We munch down food and I have my first Olympia tall can-apparently an authentic Seattle experience. 

After Highline’s scrummy delights, we drop half the team off at the bus for Vancouver, (almost getting totalled by a purple bus on Seattle’s mean streets) and head to the organic food co-op where Sarah works, and she loads us up with piles of day-old produce, bread, and jalapeno bagels. Amidst dinosaur trivia and co-workers complaining about gluten-free cupcakes, we end up with a solid stash of camp snacks. We buy our collective weight in PBR and hit the road to the fest. By the time we’re pulling out of Seattle, it’s after midnight. 

We get to the long, dark road that winds into the Gorge, the beautiful natural amphitheatre where Sasquatch takes place, and I wake up in the backseat to Justin glancing nervously at the gas light. We look at the snaking line of cars ahead and decide to high-tail it back to Vantage to gas up. Festy 101: Never enter a campground with an empty tank of gas. Just don’t do it. Electing to pee on the side of the road instead of at a terrifying ‘night club’ in a trailer, we’re well-prepared for the long wait to get in. While people run up and down the road between cars, dancing on the shoulder and racing to find their friends who moved when they ran into a field to pee, the crowd collectively inches slowly into the campsite, and I discover its impossible to nap to the sounds of Caribou (the band, not the braying animal.) We finally make it into the campsite, and post up in the grass beside a giant spectral farm sprinkler, passing out as the sun