Tim and I have been meaning to take a few days together, away from the little man. We’ve been meaning to since Marco was about 6 months. Now, he’s 2 years old. I have taken a couple of days in Vegas with my friends, and Tim has taken numerous business trips. We’ve had date nights, but never a full night away. Two weekends ago, we finally took a weekend trip, and Marco had time with his grandparents.

We drove down to Monterey for the Gentlemen of the Road tour, headlined by Mumford & Sons! Friday night we spent the evening driving, dropping off Marco, and trying to figure out where to eat. We had to turn back home after 20 minutes on the road to get  the tickets (my fault, whoops!) and then had to stop in San Jose to drop the car seat off at my mom’s (after Tim forgot to leave it in Livermore with his parents). So, we didn’t get to Pacific Grove until almost midnight. We watched some television and slept in blissfully, not waking until 9am. No little feet pounding the floors, loud shouts of ‘Mama!! Mama! Morning! Mama!’…yep.  We stopped for coffee at a cool spot called East Village. Very good coffee, and yummy breakfast sandwiches

We finally met up with our pal Adan and a couple of his buddies, and Micaela at the entrance of the Monterey Fairgrounds, where the awesome tour took place.

First stop, we went into the Steinbeck museum’s booth. Books for sale, all the movies made based on those books playing on multiple screens, props for fun photos, and a bar with two special drinks made for the tour: a beer milkshake (made with Guiness, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate sauce) and a Stopover cocktail (Wild Turkey, ginger beer, rhubarb bitters, lime, and mint). We all decided to go for the stopover cocktails and we were NOT disappointed. SO GOOD.

We moved onto the food stations, where I loaded up on a veggie corn dog and garlic fries. Fried food mmmm. While the rest of the crew headed to check out Slow Club, I waited in the epic line for merch, and snagged a Mumford & Sons tee, a Gentlemen of the Road pullover and the official tour poster.  After the set, we grabbed some Sierra Nevada beers and headed to the front to check out Haim. I’d never heard them before, and was extremely surprised by how much I loved their set. This group is so talented (also funny)! As it turns out, they are all sisters. I was suitably impressed by their guitar and bass skills – more often than not, women are up on stage strumming a couple of chords – its not bad, just not very exciting. They actually played the heck out of their instruments.  When I got back to our hotel room that night, I downloaded their EP Forever and I’ve listened to it constantly – but it’s only 3 songs!! I can’t wait for their full length album!

Haim’s last song of their set – Mumford & Sons joins the stage!!

Ukulele ooohh oooohhhh oohhhh

Gentlemen

We checked out The Apache Relay (just ok, nothing exciting) and decided to bounce after a couple of Two Gallants‘ songs (definite mehh). I grabbed a couple more Stopover cocktails, and on the way back to the group, ran into Este Haim, the bassist of Haim!!

Note: she is very tall. Also, very funny. She was cool enough to take a picture with me, and spent a good 20 minutes chatting up other fans.

I made my way back to my friends, and we got a little silly while waiting for Grouplove to come onstage.

We are in love. And we like Stopover cocktails. Yep we do.

*shakes head* They’re dorks, but I love them.

Grouplove, rockin’ the stage! Such a fun mix of sounds, great to dance to!

Already starting to mist/rain – probably ocean spray. Who cares when you’re involved a dance party with like 1000 people?!

Part 2 coming tomorrow!