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70 bands, 5 stages and 1 Indian Reservation. The '08 Langerado Festival takes place March 6-9 at Big Cypress. Watch »

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BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE — The hippies chuckled.

An employee of the Miccosukee Service Plaza had just walked by the three exquisitely dreadlocked men filling 32-ounce Styrofoam cups with coffee. She turned to them and said, “We got showers, guys.”

A pause. Then came the laughter.

“We’re allergic to water,” replied a nose-ringed member of the trio. “What are you talking about?”

The great partially washed masses have descended upon Big Cypress Seminole Reservation off Alligator Alley in the Everglades.

Thursday began four days and nights of music and shenanigans at the sixth annual Langerado Music Festival. Organizers expected 15,000 to 25,000 people throughout the weekend who will have paid hundreds to camp in the middle of Indian lands and listen to more than 85 bands.

Partying for hippies attracted by former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, yuppies attracted by R.E.M. and everyone in between began early morning at the Miccosukee plaza — right off Alligator Alley exit 49 — and 15 miles from Langerado’s grounds.

There the motto might as well have been: “No shirt, no shoes, no problem.”

Next to trinkets such as $19.99 “Real Gator” heads with marbles for eyes and cardboard boxes filled with pork skins was lots of beer.

Frank Carnizzaro, a manager, said the store purchased an extra truckload of food and two extra truckloads of beer for the weekend. He surveyed the crowd with a nervous look, but said this was nothing compared to the 80,000 who appeared eight years ago at the reservation for a Phish concert. He visibly shuddered at the memory. Carnizzaro then excused himself because a beer truck was arriving.

Money-making wasn’t going to be a problem for the store. The cheapest gas sold at $3.45 a gallon. Cases of Yuengling beer were running $40. Sam Thoyne, 21, had caravanned from Boone, N.C., to the festival with two other cars and 12 other people. It cost $93 for three cases of Budweiser and three bags of ice, Thoyne said sadly, stuffing them into a Honda CRV.

Repacking their car in front of the store, Thom Buttino, 26, and Maggie Mercado, 30, said they were on a reunion with four others from Oswego College in upstate New York. They wore sandals.

When asked whether sandals were a good fit for the Everglades, where you know, there are like gators and critters and stuff outside, they had a good response.

“We brought knee-high boots,” Mercado said. “They’re in the car.”

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Buttino deadpanned.

Mercado then glanced at her cell phone with dismay.

“Can you write about them needing cell phone towers?” she asked a reporter.

Cell phone towers?

“We’re modern hippies,” she replied.

There were more traditional ones, too.

Parked in a tan 1980 Volkswagen Bus, sat a woman named Sunflower, 21, and her friend, a man named Rah-Rah, 30. Sunflower and her husband traded a 1996 Saturn for the bus and outfitted it with a stove and a refrigerator. They basically live in there, she said.

“It doesn’t go over 55 or 60 (miles per hour), but it drives real good,” Sunflower said.

Neither Sunflower nor Rah-Rah had tickets to Langerado. They weren’t worried about getting in.

“There’s always a miracle, every day,” she said.

From the gas station, the ride was smooth until six miles from the festival’s entrance. From there, the backup of cars took two hours to reach the gates.

Few complained openly. More shirts came off, the beer cans, cigarettes and other things that are smoked emerged. Someone walked by selling a $5 Bloody Mary.

By the side of the road stood a muscular, shirtless, sweaty, dreadlocked man with more hair on his chin than many have on their heads. His name was Nugget.

Nugget, 36, explained he was one of the “Brad Pitts” of the festival circuit, given his fame. His friend Yvonne Clark, 33, was one of the “Paris Hiltons,” Nugget said.

Nugget and Clark drove down from Michigan and met 10 carloads of people here. Clark brought her 5-year-old son, Mikal.

Nugget had a strong sense of history.

He has been attending Grateful Dead shows and their more-modern variants since 1984, going to more than 350. Nugget also said he served seven years in a Missouri prison for possession of marijuana. Inside, he studied law. Marijuana is different, Nugget said, than drugs like heroin and crack that “suck you dry like a succubus.”

In defense of marijuana, Nugget quoted Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’ ”

You been in worse traffic to get into a show, Nugget?

“RFK Stadium in ‘89,” he said, referring to the Washington, D.C., venue. “It was 15 miles deep. It took 10 hours to get into the show.”

Nugget didn’t have tickets to get into Langerado, either. He planned to offer some old memorabilia to barter his way inside.

It’s part of his job to teach younger generations the right way to attend festivals, he said. To respect women, respect the music and respect the earth.

When he reached the festival gates, Nugget stopped, but wasn’t worried.

“I’ll see you inside,” he said.

Rows of tents, growing like hills of maroons, blues and greens, mixed with cars and vans on the lumpy, grassy grounds.

The clouds above grew ominous, not even gray, but a lighter shade of black. Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed. Tents spread up with expert speed.

A group of government environmental workers and auto technicians from Florida’s east coast who met each other at a previous Langerado laughed under their communal tent remembering the one time at 4 a.m. when a naked man “freaked out,” and yelled over and over, “It’s the drugs, man! It’s the drugs!”

Their goal: Not to be that naked guy. Everything else was cool.

“We wish it always could be like this, but we all got bills to pay,” said Kevin Koester, 32.

Derek Underhill, 22, napped in his huge Nissan van painted in dozens of colors and nicknamed, “Shaggin’ Wagon.” Underhill won his tickets to Langerado from a radio station for his tattoo: a tub of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” with wings on it.

Underhill was tired of girls whose first tattoos were butterflies, so he decided to get his own butter fly.

Get it?

The rain began. Soft at first, then harder. The ground became muddy, the hippies slightly wetter.

Later on, the heavens opened again and a real soaking Florida rain bore down. But in between, the sun broke through the clouds to cheers and the honking of car horns.

In the distance there appeared a rainbow.

The time was 3 p.m. The concert didn’t start for another three hours.