Washington State music lovers kick off the summer with the Sasquatch Music Festival in the Columbia Gorge each May, and they zip up to Seattle for the summer-ending Bumbershoot music-and-arts festival to bookend the season. Summers in the Pacific Northwest are all about enjoying as much of the nice weather as possible, since it doesn’t last long, so it’s a great excuse for people outside the state to come visit, too.
Bumbershoot started in Seattle in 1971, and has been a Labor Day weekend fixture since 1977. Festival-goers are regularly treated to local talent on the stage, but Bumbershoot has grown enough in stature over the decades to also attract big acts from all over the world. The “arts” part of the festival includes things like independent films, dance performances, poetry slams, and street performers, and there are plenty of vendors selling a variety of foods and arty souvenirs.
Incidentally, the word “bumbershoot” means “umbrella,” and that’s worth noting. Labor Day weekend in Seattle is usually perfectly lovely – but this is the Pacific Northwest, so anything could happen. People in this part of the world don’t let a little rain keep them from enjoying their festivals, however, so the show will most certainly go on – rain or shine.
>> Bumbershoot takes place each yer over Labor Day weekend
There are some summer festivals for which the question “how do I get there?” is a major determining factor in whether you’ll go. A festival in the middle of nowhere is going to be tougher for people without a car to reach, there’s no getting around it. But you stick a festival in the middle of a major U.S. city and you’ve just made it instantly accessible to many more people.
Sometimes music festivals are held in rural locations far from a big city, and that’s when figuring out what airport to even look up in order to reach them can take a bit of research. But even when you hear that a festival is in a big city like Seattle, that doesn’t mean that you only have one option as far as flying to that festival.
Although some of the best music festivals have finished long before Labor Day rolls around, and although Labor Day weekend in the Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly always known for its gorgeous weather, there are way worse places to spend that last holiday weekend of the summer than in Seattle to enjoy the city’s fabulous Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival.
One of the things travel experts will routinely tell you when you’re looking for ways to find cheaper fares is to be flexible. That usually means things like researching more than one travel date around the date you think you want to fly, or being willing to set a 4am alarm if that’s the best way to get a cheap flight (it is).
One is a growing city in what some people call the Bible Belt. The other is a sprawling city of sin located in the desert. The last is a chic city where the rains last forever. What in the world do Charlotte, North Carolina, Las Vegas, Nevada and Seattle, Washington possibly have in common? 
The airline named after the 49th state has announced that it will have service to the 50th state starting this fall. 
You might think otherwise, but for my money there is no finer place to be during the summer months than in the Pacific Northwest. After months of rain and cool temperatures, the skies clear up and reveal a stunning part of the world. The sun shines almost without interruption from mid-June until September. The temperatures are warm, but rarely hot. Humidity? That doesn’t exist in a city like Seattle in the summer. Beauty? There is no shortage of it. Things to do? A million.
Paris has a tower. Seattle has a needle. Parisians like to drink coffee in cafes. Seattlites drink a lot of coffee. Paris has a river. Seattle has a sound. Paris is one of the great cities in Europe. Seattle is one of the great cities in North America. It is a marriage made in heaven and now the two cities will be connected like never before.