'Daydreamers' Short on Cash, Long on Fun (PHOTOS)

About 200 people attended the “Daydream Festival” Sunday on a relatively tiny strip of grassless land officially known as Richard Alatorre Park, a stone’s throw from the 134 freeway and the gigantic Eagle Rock.

The event, free and open to all from noon to 7 p.m., was aimed at raising donations for Collaborative Eagle Rock Beautiful, a community group that has been fundraising to pay off some $70,000 in loans to purchase and develop the Eagle Rock Canyon Trail, a four-and-a-half-acre open space that is the last wilderness trail between Eagle Rock and Pasadena.

The Daydream Festival was presented by Cannabis Clubs United With the Community (CCUWC), which describes itself as "the majority of open-minded residents in the community [who] have no problems with the local medical marijuana collectives that are in our neighborhood."

The event's sponsors included a string of medical marijuana collectives in Eagle Rock as well as a number of neighborhood businesses such as , and , the festival featured “Morning Glory,” a Grateful Dead cover band known not just for its many past performances in the neighborhood but also as "The Medical Marijuana Band of Eagle Rock," according to the CCUWC website.

For much of the day, adults and children alike hiked up and down the roughly mile-long Eagle Rock Canyon Trail overlooking the across from Figueroa. Vendors sold such things as clothes, jewelry and incense—and a masseuse was at hand to soothe all manner of somatic as well as mental tensions.

By the end of the day, CERB came $47 closer to paying its loan. At an average of a little less than $7 fundraised every hour, that’s a small dent indeed in CERB’s debt. But then again, it’s arguably not the money but the effort that counts.

The next Daydream Festival is scheduled in March 2012.