Early on a Wednesday morning in the middle part of June I set on an experience with two others friends, and we I had no idea what to expect.  We were going to Manchester, Tennessee to see a music festival that had been anticipated by thousands of people since the festival had been announced.  The festival was called Bonnaroo, and it was the making of the next Woodstock.

We left from Nags Head N.C. at 2:00a.m. for Bonnaroo and drove in the hot June sun of mid-morning until arriving in Manchester about 2:30 in the afternoon.  Again we sat in the hot sun in a 1988 Ford Taurus with no a/c waiting in line to get into the festival for two hours and the gates had already been open for two hours.  As we pull up to the check point to get in, the workers gave us our wrist bands in exchange for our tickets.  They were checking a few cars for nitrous tanks, but it seemed like they did not care, because the workers were our age and they appeared to be smoking pot.  This was unexpected of the workers; right away we knew this was a one-of-a-kind festival.  The only thing the worker asked was, “if we had six hundred gallons of moonshine in the trunk on the car.”  Of course he was joking with us and told us to move along.

            Finally arriving at our camp site, which was basically how many tents we could put up fast enough and ended up looking like sardines in a tin.  We had two tents and enough room for three chairs and a big cooler.  There were people from almost every state in the United States.  We were the first of thousands to arrive because our wrist bans were 19,373 ,74, and 75 and that was a few hours after the gates were opened.  The music started on Friday at 12 o’clock so we had all night to chill and hang out with the people around us.   One of them was from Colorado and others were from Michigan.  Everyone was telling stories and passing around pipes and bongs just as the hippies did in the 60’s. 

Finally we awoke in the mid morning with that hot June sun coming in our tents and the smell of smoky unbathed hippies and the sweetest smell of marijuana.  There were still people coming in all night long and as we walked around to find out where everything was we almost got lost because there were so many people.  The music started and the weekend was underway and full of surprises, good and bad.  The music never stopped until six a.m. every morning and would start again at noon.  Anywhere we would walk there would be lots of people trying to sell us all kinds of drugs.  Some of the best marijuana I have ever seen.  This is the only place I have ever been where there was a handful of rent-a-cops (not real state police) that did not even care about what was going on.  There were so many people that it would have been impossible to regulate the drugs that were there.  The days were being counted down to what was the greatest festival since Woodstock 69’.  When Sunday came it was not an unhappy feeling to an indescribable weekend but an experience I will never forget.  After the last show Sunday night which ended at one o’clock a.m. we decided to stay another night and leave the next morning.  Our last night we spent just like the first but talking about stories and things we heard or saw over the weekend.  When we awoke in the morning traffic was backed up for miles and we knew that it would be a while before we departed Bonnaroo.  We filed in the departure line at about two in the afternoon and finally reached the main interstate after about three hours in line.  After departing we thought of all the stories we could tell all of our friends when we got back home.  We reached Richmond after a long night of driving at five in the morning.  Now we just have to wait until next year to see if the next Bonnaroo will be just like the first one. driving at five in the morning.  Now we just have to wait until next year to see if the next Bonnaroo will be just like the first one.