It is a beautiful area and I'm looking forward to going back with Chris.

Of course I took pictures.

The Gorge is a much smaller venue than Zilker Park. The daily attendance at Sasquatch is about a third of ACL (22K vs 65K) and it is much faster to get from one stage to another at The Gorge.

Location
ACL Festival is in downtown Austin. There is no on site parking, but there are plenty of shuttles from downtown. The shuttles can be annoying if the lines are long, but for the most part they work pretty well. Sasquatch is two and a half hours east of Seattle. Once you get close in, you have to wait in some annoying traffic before you can park.
Winner: ACL Fest

View
As much as I love the view of downtown Austin from Zilker Park, it is hard to beat the view of the Columbia River Gorge at Sasquatch.
Winner: Sasquatch

Food
ACL Fest has lots of local vendors with interesting dishes. (I'm talking about you, Hot and Crunchy Avocado Cone!) The prices are surprising reasonable, with most main dishes being $6. The selection for vegetarians is excellent. Sasquatch is a different story. The vegetarian options are limited, the prices are too high, and the dishes are uninspired. I'm still steaming about paying $8 for a vegetarian gyro which was pita, lettuce, tomato, and Tzatziki sauce. This was the same price as the beef, lamb, and chicken gyros!
Winner: ACL Fest

Festival Performers
After getting back on Sunday, I looked at the ACL lineup for this year. There was a surprising amount of overlap with the artists that played at Sasquatch. ACL has more stages (8 vs. 4), but Chris and I rarely went to anything besides the biggest four stages at ACL anyway. Honestly, I think it just depends on the specific line up year-to-year as to which would be better.
Winner: Draw

Weather
You would think this would go to Sasquatch in a heartbeat. This year it was 85 with blazing sun, and to me it felt just as bad as the 100 degree weather at ACL. Maybe I've blocked out how bad ACL really was, but I seemed to be sweating just as much at Sasquatch as I did at ACL. The big difference is when the sun goes down. ACL stays pretty warm, but the temperature plummets at Sasquatch. Unfortunately, this means you have to lug around a jacket or hoodie all day just to use for the last couple of bands.
Winner: Sasquatch by a nose.

Couple more random observations:
Sasquatch has stations where you can refill your water bottles, but they are the same as the hand washing stations for the bathrooms. So yay for free water, but boo for annoying lines to actually get it.

I'm glad I'm not a beer drinker. Sasquatch has tiny beers for $9 each. I'm sure this is worse than ACL.

You can bring food into Sasquatch. If we ever go again, I will definitely carry in some food even if it will be annoying to lug around.

Photos on Flickr!

On Saturday, we drove up to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It's about an hour north of Seattle, so it's a nice little day trip. As you'll see from our photos, it was very picturesque.

Sunday, we stayed closer to home and took a stroll in Washington Park Arboretum. Many plants and trees were in bloom, making for another scenic outing. Pictures!

We adopted Felix in 1997 while living in Boston. We had already had Oscar for 2 months and he was none too pleased with the addition to the household, clearly illustrated by the noises emanating from his mouth. We kept an eye on them during the day and separated them at night and eventually Oscar learned to live with Felix.

When we moved to Austin, Chris took Felix in his car (I took Oscar in mine, because Oscar is clearly a mama's boy). If Chris is to be believed, Felix proceeded to meow every 10 seconds for the entire drive.

While living in Austin, Felix had the adventure of a lifetime when he fell out of our 2nd story bedroom window when the screen popped out. It was a very windy day and I heard a big bang come from upstairs. I was rounding the corner to head upstairs to check it out and froze as I saw Felix on the other side of the front door, staring at me with wide eyes. I wish I had a picture of this moment, both of us frozen in place, staring at each other in disbelief.

Felix could be full of beans, hence the affectionate nickname "Evil Orange Cat". He would wake me up early when he wanted to be fed. He would stick his nose into places it didn't belong, including the occasional excursion into the garage. We would let him roam around until he was ready to come back in and he would return with a stylish dirt mustache.

He was also very entertaining. When he was as a kitten he played fetch, actually bringing the foam ball back to be thrown again. His acrobatics when going after the laser pointer would crack us up to no end. He was also a champion tail chaser, who would administer punishing licks on the occasions he actually caught it.

I will miss my sweet Felix. The one who met me at the door every day when I got home. The one who would curl up in my lap while watching TV. The one who would drool and purr and lick me with his scratchy tongue when I petted him.

It is unfair that he did not make it to his 12th birthday, but I will always be grateful for the time we did have with him.

Here are some pictures of the amazing glasswork and the 100 year old building in which the pieces were displayed.

When I saw in the paper that Regional Qualifiers for the 2009 Olympic Trials were being held a mere 5 miles from our house, I knew I had to see it in person.

Saturday at noon, there were four simultaneous matches being held at the Granite Curling Club. It was hard to follow all four matches at once, so we concentrated on the two 4-0 teams on Sheet 2 and the two 0-4 teams on Sheet 3. We only watched 5 ends (ends are basically innings - there are 10 ends in a match) since we were not early enough to score seats in the upstairs gallery. It was an entertaining afternoon, and has made us interested in attending one of their open houses just to throw a few stones ourselves.

Here are some pictures Chris took of the event.

We made a slight detour to visit the infamous blue field of Boise State. Unfortunately, we could not actually see the blue field even after circling the stadium. I could see the orange end zone through one gate, but the camera could not capture it. Anyway, I hope you stadium enthusiasts (Dad) and Boise State enthusiasts (Bill) are happy we did the drive by.

The rest of our drive was very pretty through the hills and mountains of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. We were happy to finally get to the house and set up our Aerobed.

We were even happier when our belongings came on Tuesday and we had a real bed to sleep in.

Even though the road was open, there was a bad section I had to drive. It was cold and clear, but the wind was blowing lots of snow across the road and visibility was not very good. Chris took a video that is posted with our pictures from today. Luckily, the bad conditions lasted less than hour.

After that bad stretch, the drive was perfect. It was very cold again, but we were finally able to take advantage of the 75 mph speed limit.

Tomorrow, we finally hit Seattle!

The cold (down to 1 degree by the time we hit Laramie) hit the Prius hard, and we ended up only getting 40 mpg. Tomorrow should be warmer, so hopefully we'll bounce back.

I realized today that Chris is picking up quite a few states on this trip - Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. I already have all 50, so he's making a dent in my lead.

Here are a few more pictures from today.

The weather was really good for driving. It was in the 70s in Texas and dropped to the 30s in Kansas, but it was clear the entire drive.

The Prius started off with 50+ mpg, but when it got windy and colder (and Chris was driving), it dropped into the low to mid 40 mpg range.

We arrived in Newton, KS around 6 p.m. Felix is now chilling on the bed, and Oscar is chilling behind the bed. No big surprise there.

Chris posted a few pictures of our adventures today.

Our hotel had a nice view of the marina and the Space Needle.

We also hung out with Brian and Tom while, ate some good food, and just walked around a bunch. Seattle definitely has more "fall" than I expected.