We spent the last few days up in Chicago for the Dave Matthews Band Caravan and had a great time. Taking Trey to his first real concert experience was overall a very positive experience. As we expected he didn’t make it all the way until the end of the show any of the days, though we didn’t leave until the encore break on Friday night. He actually slept through the entire DMB set that night. Traffic ended up being terrible even after leaving early, so each night after that Kim took Trey back to the hotel earlier to avoid the traffic. My friends had arranged for limo bus transportation back downtown and I took advantage of that those two nights.

Family Photo

The music was a really great lineup. Big surprises of the weekend for me included Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Ben Folds, and Mariachi El Bronx. I figured Ben Folds was going to be good, but I forgot just how many great songs he has in his catalog. The other two big surprises came from my friends’ suggestions and they were awesome performances. The only real let down for me was the Flaming Lips playing The Dark Side of the Moon, which I thought was going to be really good but was just really weird instead.

Chillin' On Day 2

Another disappointment for me came from the site that was selected for the show. “Lakeside,” as they have called it, is really just the site of a former steel mill that was shut down in 1992. Since that time it has sat vacant with most of the buildings removed but not all the bricks, stones, and other artifacts that were left behind. In front of each stage was a large mulched area, but getting between stages could be a little troublesome, even with our super three-wheeled jogging stroller. This can’t compare to the large green lawns I’ve sat on at other festivals. Besides the ground of the grounds, the traffic nightmare from Friday night was the worst I have ever seen. We sat in the parking lot for well over an hour before moving from our row of cars and this was before the show was even completely over.

Trey Making Friends

Not everything was poorly organized though. The food stands were actually much better than the average carnival food. Also I appreciated having around a dozen craft breweries on site for purchase. Free water was available if you had your own containers, but not enough booths were there. One of my friends waited over an hour. We brought in our own disposable bottles,which I wouldn’t have done if water was easier to get. With all of that said, some issues are to be expected from a first time festival, and I hope that if they do this again that other changes will be made. We still had a great time and would consider it again in the future.

Ready For DMB

These photos all came from friends’ phones. I have more photos from our own camera, so I’ll get those posted later this week.