Not exactly a family golf outing, Minnesota’s annual 10,000 Lakes Festival is an outdoor jam-band fan’s cloud-nine with 40 inspired bands playing on four stages for four July days, and into the night.

The four stages are within sight of each other on a 60-acre fairground/concert bowl, so you can easily eyeball and hear your inclinations. The five, huge campsite areas buzzing around the lakey, rolling Northern Minnesota terrain ring the concert sites and nifty vendor areas. Accommodations range from a VIP zone – maxed out RV’s with meals/beverages included – to sincerely bohemian camps by the lake or in the shady, wooded hillsides.

The campsite colonies add 500-acres to the concert zone campus. This four-day relaxathon on Soo Pass Ranch in Detroit Lakes is as high-tech as it needs to be. The intimate setting – as intimate as 18,000 boogying folks can be – makes obtrusive security and looming Jumbotron video screens unnecessary. Despite the size and outrageousness, it’s a no-tension festival; there was only one arrest during the four day crusade. The staff, it seems, are there to have fun too.

2006 main stage headliners included Phil Lesh and Friends, String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams and former members of Phish, Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon. Phil Lesh, the former Grateful Dead bassist, continued the live music celebration that was the Dead’s trademark. Lesh, who had a liver transplant in 1998, has become a verbal advocate of organ donation.

In the midst of his set, he spoke about the need for organ donors and thanked the fourteen year-old donor who saved his life. Lesh explained that in order to become an organ donor, “All you need to do is tell one of your family members that you want to be an organ donor – they have the right to speak on your behalf.” www.phillesh.net.

This four-day high energy but 0-violence camping trip with tunes lets you set your clock anywhere on the dial; all frames-of-mind and age are welcome. Groovy fits here, an ideal redefinition of what music festivals should be. The three smaller stages featured up-and-coming talents including, Tea Leaf Green www.tealeafgreen.com and Umphrey’s McGee www.umphreys.com – both bands rocked the campers with homegrown grooves and the bona fide talent, not the sort that’s manufactured in studios. Two of the three smaller venues are outdoors; the other doubles as a wild-west saloon.

For details on the July 18-21 festival’s four days of sleep-optional camping and live music wildness, visit www.10klf.com for more information. Book a hotel or pack a tent, fly to Minneapolis, rent a car and wander north. The 2007 lineup includes Bob Weir & Ratdog, Gov’t Mule, Trey Anastasio, Derek Trucks, and 60 other bands.

* The festival encourages patrons to offset their CO2 footprint by offering ‘Cool Tags’ via www.10klf.com, which will help concertgoers calculate the emissions created by their journey to Detroit Lakes, MN and back using a Google Map function.