Festival Fun!!!

This is a pretty long post today. The longest one I have posted yet. It's difficult cramming 3 days worth of photos into one post. Actually 4 days because I am also posting about a festival our daughter's band performed in the weekend before this one.

We traveled to the heart of Idaho to 'The Braun Brother Reunion Music Festival' in Challis.

This is a tiny frontier mining town nestled in a beautiful valley. The population on a normal day is 900, but swells to about 5900 on this weekend that the Braun Brothers have their reunion. They are an Idaho family of great musicians and song writers. They bring in bands from Texas and other states for this festival. It's a three day line-up of great bands playing great music. It started on Thursday and ran through Saturday. Our daughter's band played on Friday afternoon. You can go to her website the (kimstockingband.com) if you would like to read a little more about them.

(I can't get the link to work, so you will have to type in the address.)

This is main street Challis,Idaho.

There are still working gold mines here in the mountains around this town that employs several of the residents here.

It seemed that every third or forth building was a saloon. Just what you would expect of an old mining town.


I loved this old house or business. In the upstairs window there is an old iron bed that I would have loved to see close up. Maybe next year I will get the nerve to find the owner and see how much they would sell it for.




Remnants of the old frontier.




My sweet girl Kimberlee





She was so excited to be included in this years line up of bands for this event. I hope they have her back again, because I would certainly love a repeat of this past weekend. Good music, good scenery, and good company.



There was a great crowd there and a lot of the people who love her music came the two and a half hours to listen to her. (Oh I think I'm bragging, aren't I ) (sorry, I'll probably do more of it as this goes on)








They next couple of pictures are her very talented musicians that play with her. I didn't get a good photo of the drummer at this festival.

These next photos are of the great campground we stayed at while there. 'The Challis Hot Springs' is up a beautiful canyon and sits right on the banks of the Salmon River. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, and I never wanted to leave.

This barn sits right at the entrance of the bed and breakfast and campground.




You can see the B&B in the background. Of course it was full.

A front view of the B&B. I love the wrought iron work on the front and on the balcony.

This is the pool and access to the hot springs. It was a busy place all weekend and there were no vacancies and yet it was so quiet, We loved it!

I wanted to share with you another music festival that Kim's band performed at the weekend before in our own area. 'The Northern Rockies Folk Festival' is a huge event here in the summer
It is held in Hailey, Idaho. I read the paper this week and it said that there were 5000 attendees for this event this year. It didn't seem like that many people to me, but then I didn't stop to count. Kim has been performing at this festival for several years. My daughter Ember used to be in the band with Kim and sang back up vocals. They sounded so awesome together. Ember married and moved off to Boise and had a baby, so you know how that goes. I think this was Kim's second folk festival without her sister backing her up.

This venue is such a great place to have this event. It's right down next to the Bigwood River.

I think Kim is very comfortable performing here. It's her home and she loves it and the people.

Kim has sung her whole life. I used to sing when I was younger and was asked to sing for weddings, graduations and the like, and while practicing for them, I noticed that Kim at a very young age had an amazing voice and had perfect pitch.( oh no, there I go again, sorry for the bragging, but if I don't do it here, who will I get to listen to me) She always knew the songs as well as I did by the time she had heard me practicing for days on end. All of our daughters sing. I really encouraged them to take chorus and choir (actually insisted, really) in school. We love music in our home and did a lot of singing together as a family.

She really has the best guys in her band. So talented and just good men.

Hello...is anyone still there? If you are, thank you for listening to my tales of our great little road trip to Challis,Idaho and enjoying the peace and beauty there. It really was great to get away for awhile. Landon did well on this trip. It was our first time being away from home this long with him, but he did great. He doesn't always do well with routine changes, but he seemed to love this as much as we did. This little break was good for me and just reinforced how great my life is and how very lucky I am. I hope to take little breaks more often so I can keep reminding myself that life really is wonderful.