When my brother Todd mentioned he’d be in Washington over Labor Day weekend, we knew we wanted to meet up with him at some point. When he said he planned on seeing the Dave Matthews Band with some friends at the Gorge amphitheater, we bought tickets as well. The stage is built right beside the Columbia River, overlooking the gorge below (hence the name). It’s an amazing place to see a concert.
Every year Dave Matthews plays three shows over Labor Day Weekend, and people come out and make a weekend of it by camping in a huge field near the amphitheater. During concerts, this field turns into a 5000+ site (or thereabouts) campground. Here’s what our site looked like from the ground.
Here’s what it probably looked like via satellite (I’m not sure but I think our site was somewhere around the 5 o’clock area of the circle).
Photo courtesy of Google Maps.
Luckily we were able to find Todd and his friends before going in so we could all park and camp together, otherwise I don’t know how you’d find people in such a huge space. Parking was kind of chaotic, but a controlled chaos. The people running the venue gave everyone enough space to set up tents so we ended up with a good-sized gap between us and the next people, which was nice. And we got there in the early afternoon so we had plenty of time to hang out and enjoy the sunshine before heading into the concert.
The band jammed for hours, playing a few older songs but mostly songs from their later albums. When they finally came back out for an encore just before midnight, we realized how exhausted we were and decided to skip out early and beat the crowds back to the campground.
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