Chicago Family and Bonnaroo!

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June 17th 2007

Published: August 7th 2007

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Un Mundo Hermoso

Daisy Duke

Wendy playing out a fantasy

After a fond farewell to South America, we arrived in the USA to begin the next chapter of our travels. We flew via Miami (where we had to question whether we had really left Latin America) to Chicago.

Our initial impressions of the country are (1) stores are huge and getting bigger. We visited a couple of Walmart and Target stores that were the size of towns in Scotland or Australia. (2) the people are huge and getting bigger.... monstrous portions of junk food are taking their toll. After getting over the moral dilemma we faced from having just left poverty stricken countries where people beg on the streets for food, I decided to get stuck in too.....! My waist line is heading North once again......

We spent a couple of days with the Murphys catching up on 'the old days' when I lived in the area. We also began the huge preparation for a caravan drive to Tennessee to the Bonnaroo festival in a few days time (more on that later)..... It was great to see the family all in good shape and enjoying the summer.

Next we ventured downtown into Chicago and stayed with Munawar, Maura

Wendy and Nabil

Getting along just fine...

and new arrival Nabil (aka The Bug). Nabil is a cutie and loads of fun and smiles, he loved hanging out with us all at a BBQ with all our old Chicago friends. It was great to see Todd and Laurie planning a high altitude hiking adventure to Ecuador, good luck guys!

The boys took a day to catch up over a game of golf while the girls went to lunch and got tipsy. We joined MJ and Margaret (still deeply in love after 9 months of marriage, how sweet), for a game of Kube and a picnic by the lake. Chicago is such a cool city and it's great to hang out by the lake in the summer.

Thankfully, Munawar has looked after my old Jeep really well since I was gone and very kindly agreed to let us borrow it for a couple of months to tour the country. We took a trip to Walmart and loaded up with camping gear and maps. Wendy christened the car Argie.

So then we were off to Bonnaroo! We drove 11 hours in a caravan of 3 cars with 12 people into the South through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky

Nelson

Lookin' cool

and Tennessee. The South is a real cultural change from the North, all those movies you see where the one toothed Southern weirdo in dungarees kidnaps the hitch hikers are all true! It's scary. Sorry MJ ;-)

On the way, we stopped off in Nashville, a city I've always wanted to visit and the home of Country music. It was brilliant, we saw the Grand Ol' Opry Theatre, a Willie Nelson Museum, although it was closed, and the Cooter Museum of the Dukes of Hazzard! As we were both big fans of the show we spent a long time hanging out here. Wendy got to play out a fantasy of being Daisy Duke on the bonnet of the General Lee. I got to play out a fantasy watching her :-o

The highlight of the drive was Wendy asking for a Camomile tea in a real old time diner deep in the South. The rather large waitress looked her up and down and replied "Honey, we just got Coffffeee....." Classic.

The lowlight of the drive was when the air conditioning in Argie imploded and started blowing hot air over us. Horrible when we were driving 11 hours through

Jammin in Barrington

Charlie and Stuart in the Murphy basement

90F+ heat....

See link for details, but basically, Bonnaroo is a huge 4 day music festival in Tennessee. 100,000 people camping and seeing great music in a beautiful setting.

http://www.bonnaroo.com/

Luckily it hardly rained this year, so there was no mud that is typical of such events. Highlights for us were seeing The Police on their reunion tour, Wilco, The Kings of Leon (playing a brilliant homecoming set on the main stage), The John Butler Trio and Damien Rice. An unexpected highlight was seeing Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Ralph is the King of Blue Grass music (got 3 grammies for the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Are Thou a few years ago). The crowd went wild for this 80+ year old hillbilly and his band of Southern fiddlers..... Bill, you would have loved it.

After 4 sweaty dusty days, we were off and heading East.

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