Our legendary summer as the official Big Rock Grasshoppin' Contest Winners has officially begun!  When Parker and I arrived in the 'Peg we headed straight to the festival.

When we got there, we met up with Darlene, Big Rock’s (awesome!) Manitoba rep. She gave us our VIP passes, and took us to the VIP reception area where we got a sweet swag-bag from the festival folks, which included their lovely new reusable mugs.

 We had a few Grasshoppers, and were introduced to all kinds of important Big Rock and festival people!

The Winnipeg Folk Festival is unique in that it is held at a Provincial Park (Birds Hill), rather than taking place in the city.

This means CAMPING instead of a hotel stay! We had some trouble setting the tent up, but after about an hour of fiddling, we managed to make it stand up!

 It even stayed that way for the rest of the weekend. Success!

The campsites at the festival are INSANE! Despite our tent troubles, we were definitely happy that we chose to camp. 

Over the course of the weekend, we saw a parade complete with marching band, more than one drum circle (if you can call 200 people on bongos a “circle”), multiple temporary DIY stages, some of which were built to look like giant pyramids and sphinxes, impromptu musical sessions and live artwork, and the occasional crowd of streakers racing past.

It was brilliant, and the best way I can think to describe it is as a little prairie-style Burning Man.

As for the festival itself, we watched a ton of excellent live shows, including Jimmy Cliff, the Avett Brothers, Konono No. 1, Delhi 2 Dublin, John Hiatt, Arrested Development and Ghostkeeper.

We also really enjoyed the food backstage, it would definitely be worth it to volunteer at the fest just to eat that food all weekend!
Of course, we met a bunch of people and also spent a lot of time in the Big Rock Tavern!

Winnipeg has a really green festival and they even have compostable beer cups, so that was great.

Next up: Dawson City Music Festival! Hope to see you there!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you want to live vicariously through Parker and Jenna this summer, follow Big Rock Brewery on Twitter or visit the Grasshoppin' Contest Facebook Page.

But, if you want to BE Parker and Jenna next summer, enter the Grasshoppin' Contest!