Austin City Has No Limits!

We are back at Hurvitz North this week, relaxing with some old friends; nothing can be better. But last week, Alan and Steven had a great time in Austin attending the Austin City Limits Music festival.  As was the case with the Philadelphia Folk Festival post, Ruth didn't attend, so I'm going to drop the third party style for this post and go back to first person.

For the very few of you who don't know me that well, a little background is in order.  Popular music has always been a core part of my makeup, and I managed to pass this gene along to all three of our kids. Our kids knew the names of all four Beatles before they could recite their ABC's; their lullabys were more likely to be written by Randy Newman, Paul Simon, or Bob Dylan than by Mother Goose; and they grew up in a house where the stereo played more than the television. While some families have traditions that include going to the Tigers, or tailgating before a college football game, our big tradition is attending the Ann Arbor Folk Festival.

There are several major music festivals that occur annually in the United States. One of them is the Austin City Limits Festival that has been held in the Fall for the past 10 years in Austin (because Austin is such a great town for music, 2 of the major festivals are in Austin; ACL in the Fall, and South by Southwest in the spring). It's a big, big, festival; 3 days, 12 hours a day, 130 acts, 75,000 people each day, major press coverage, etc. etc. The music is, to say the least, eclectic; folk to rock;  electronic funk to country; rap to jazz; you name it.  Lots of well known names have played the festival; last year the Eagles headlined; this year headliners included Stevie Wonder, Kanye West, Coldplay and Arcade Fire (none of whom we actually saw- but that's another story).

One of Balloons Flown Each Night of ACL 

In one of the great happy coincidences in life, Steven finished his gig in Alaska September 1st (his and Tammy's blog has now ended; it is a great look at life in Alaska- see it at http://www.moosespotting.blogspot.com) and he spent three weeks right after with Ruth and me before heading off to Washington, D.C. to start his new adventure with Tammy.  Since Steven spent September "funemployed" (his word), and I of course am spending these 6 months traveling with Austin as one of my targets,  it was only natural that Steven and I would spend part of those three weeks traveling down to Austin for ACL.  It wasn't a slam dunk; we had to enter a lottery for three day passes; we had to book the hotel 6 months in advance; but we were selected in the lottery and found a hotel and off we went to Austin!

Austin is a great city for a number of reasons.  It has an area going for blocks and blocks that is nothing but bars and music cafes where there is every type of music you can imagine; it is home to University of Texas (Let's Go, Longhorns!!); it is the State Capital; and the LBJ Museum is located on the UT campus. We started our trip with a visit to the Capitol:

The Capitol is situated in the middle of a very lovely park with lots of trees; that's a good thing because the temperature was close to 100 the whole time we were there without a lot of shade from the sun; the trees were a great source of relief.  In front of the Capitol was a monument to the  Texas Confederate Soldiers who had died during the Civil War;  the inscription on the statue read as follows:

"Died for States Rights Guaranteed Under the Constitution".  I guess I should say that the Statue honors those who lost their life during the War of Northern Aggression!

We also went to the Texas State Historical Museum, which was really, really well done, and we went to the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum.  One of my goals is to visit every Presidential Library of the Presidents that I admire (there are 14 of these Museums; 13 run by the Federal Government for every president since Hoover and one run by the State of Illinois for Lincoln; I have or will visit 7 of them by the end of this adventure). Here is the outside of the LBJ Library and Museum, located on the UT Campus:

The Museum is fairly well done; understated; a lot of material of his early days, and in places a little kitsche, including an animatronic LBJ that tells some of his favorite stories and jokes:

There is the obligatory scale replica of the Oval Office, and so forth, but there was one exhibit that, for me, summed up why this President, who is most often remembered now for the Viet Nam War debacle, should be given his due, especially in this age of divisiveness and no holds barred politics and failure to compromise, and that is the wall showing his legislative accomplishments during his presidential term.

 "The Thousand Laws of the Great Society". So much that we take for granted- the Civil Rights Act, Project Head Start, the National Endowment for the Arts,  PBS, Medicare and Medicaid, student loan programs, housing programs, environmental protection, transportation grants, and on and on, were the result of LBJ knowing how to push the right buttons and get congress to move his agenda along. While he left office a beaten man, knowing he couldn't run for reelection, he did more domestically for this country than any president since FDR.

Ok; so much for the historical part of this post. Now to the fun; ACL.  What a festival. We got to see some of our favorite acts, including:

Asleep at the Wheel

Alison Krauss and Union Station 

Randy Newman 

Brandi Carlile

We also made a lot of new friends and heard new groups that will be on our playlist for a long time, including one of our favorite new finds, J. Roddy Walston and the Business (check out his version of Little Richard's "Lucille" on YouTube; Awesome!): 

Another standout for me was Tyler Bryant, who looks 12, is actually 20, and plays with the soul of Hendrix:

And now for the awards:  Many Categories at this Festival.  

Best Way to Know the Festival is in Texas:  The "Cowgirl Boots and Shorts" Look (A lot of cowgirls at this festival!) 

Best Tattoo in the Festival:  The Guy who (in Steven's Words) can order a beer in a bar even if its too loud to be heard just by pointing at his arm: 

Best Hair (By default; lots of great hair but I happened to catch a picture of this one): 

Best Stage Look No Matter the Temperature: A tie between: 

Mariachi El Bronx, a Mariachi band staffed by punk rockers; 

Elizaveta (who, by the way says that she wants to create "within your chest a safe, magical, truthful place of power beyond the slow burn of stars."; and

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. (Costume #1)

Best Performance by A Musician Who Spent the Summer Getting Her Learner's Permit: 

16 Year Old Ruby Jane, who plays a dozen instruments

Best Dancing by a Sign Interpreter- the major stages actually had women interpreting the music through signs; while the signing, I'm sure, was good, the real communication was in the way the women would move to the music and pantomime instruments so that the hearing impaired in the audience would be able to feel the rhythm and the soul of the music: 

This woman was fantastic; I enjoyed her more than the band she was intepreting! 

Best Performance by a Band we didn't care about but were only there to see the next act: 

Bomba Estereo, a latin electronic dance band playing right before Randy Newman; you couldn't help but moving to the beat 

Weirdest Combination that Really, Really Worked Well: 

The New Orleans Preservation Jazz Hall Band playing with Country Legend Del McCoury

Best Crowds:  

and finally, best group to represent Detroit and Do Us Proud:  Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., who put on a set that just set the audience on fire. Congratulations, Boys. 

ACL was Awesome.  Here's to more great live music in all of our lives!  

Next Stop: Ann Arbor to visit Danny and Washington D.C. to Visit Steve, Tammy and Leah!! 

Bethany's Super Yuper Road Trip!

Happy Labor Day everyone! We're back at Hurvitz North, enjoying a restful week with Steven, who flew in from Anchorage to Traverse City last night.  Before Steven joined us, however, we decided it was time for Bethany to take a road trip with us; we decided to spend a couple of days in the Upper  Peninsula, hereinafter referred to as the "UP" (sorry, I haven't used the phrase "hereinafter referred to" in 10 weeks now but old habits die hard).  One of the things we like about Charlevoix is that it is a very useful base to explore much of the rest of the state; less than an hour from either Traverse City or the Mackinac Bridge; a little over 3 hours to Munising, and so forth. So we dropped Danny off at University of Michigan (Go Blue, Danny!) and headed for Charlevoix.  We could have gone to Munising as a day trip from there, but we have never taken Bethany overnight with us anywhere but Charlevoix, so we decided to stay overnight in the UP and take Bethany on her first road trip. 

We wanted to take a leisurely and scenic drive, so once we crossed the bridge we took US 2 West, which follows the Northern shore of Lake Michigan. We're glad we did; we came across a fantastic bridge, known as the "Cut River Bridge". It was constructed during World War II whenever steel was available and spans a river to Lake Michigan. It soars over the tree tops in Cut River Valley in a heavily forested area and there are walkways across and under the bridge, including a boardwalk leading to the shores of Lake Michigan. It is a cantilevered bridge, which accounts for the heavy steel structure, a style that is fairly rare in Michigan. 

Really cool infrastructure 

Looking down into the Cut River Valley forest

After a picnic lunch on the shores of Lake Michigan we drove to Munising, which is a small city on the shores of Lake Superior and is an excellent base to explore both the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and a large number of waterfalls, all created by the "Munising Formation", a rock structure of limestone and sandstone that extends across a good portion of the Eastern UP.  We knew about Pictured Rocks but the waterfalls were a very pleasant surprise. There are well over a dozen of them in the immediate Munising area and even more within a short drive away.  They pop up right on the road: 

Some are short walks from the parking area through a boardwalk or groomed trail:

Munising Falls

Bethany enjoying Munising Falls 

Wagner Falls

And some require a bit of a hike but are well worth it 

Miners Falls 

Tannery Falls

We took a sunset cruise to view Pictured Rocks.  Pictured Rocks was the first officially designated National Lakeshore; it is 15 miles of lakeshore along Lake Superior featuring sandstone cliffs. The sandstone is porous and soft, the water table is higher than the shoreline, and as a result water seeps through the rocks, carrying minerals which create the different colors. Additionally, the crashing waves are constantly sculpting the cliffs, creating "sculptures', caves, and cave-ins. Some of the sculptured rocks truly look like the things they are named after: 

Miner's Castle 

Indian Head

 Chapel Rock 

Some of the caves and arches were very dramatic 

As beautiful as the sculptures of the cliffs were, the colors caused by minerals seeping and dripping were breathtaking; the colors change depending on the light of day and close to sunset was really a great time to enjoy them

(if you go, try to sit on the right side of the boat towards the center; a guy who lives there told us to do that and he was right)











Between the waterfalls and Pictured Rocks we thought we had seen the real beauty of the area, but we decided that Bethany could use a swim so we went to one of the local beaches on Lake Superior. As much as we love Lake Michigan, Lake Superior is......well....... just superior.  The size of Lake Superior is overwhelming; it has more cubic volume than the other four great lakes combined; if you filled a swimming pool with the water from Lake Superior to a depth of five feet the area of the pool would be greater than the area of the United States; it is the deepest, coldest, purest, clearest, etc. etc. It is spectacular and the beach we were at was lovely.

And Bethany enjoyed swimming in the cold, clear water.

We loved Munising, even its self deprecating sense of humor. There are a lot of jokes told by the locals about the 200 plus inches of snow they get every year and the lack of cultural activities. They even have an interesting slogan for their city:

After we left Munising, we stopped at Tahquamenon Falls. We had both been there as kids, but hadn't been back in decades.  The beauty speaks for itself:

It was a great couple of days; Bethany was perfect; it may have been her first road trip but we know it won't be her last!  She loved the hotel and, of course, the car.

We hope everyone has had a great Labor Day weekend.

Next Stop:  Austin City Limits Festival!!!!!