Tips for RV Camping at a Music Festival
As you know, I love a good music festival. For the second year in a row, me, my cousins and a few friends went to Firefly Music Festival. I’ve been to music festivals all over the country now, and this has become a favorite. It is the only one I plan to return to again and again. One of the reasons I love the experience is because it’s known as the Great Atlantic Campout. We took on the camping component of the festival in comfort with an RV, also known as a recreation vehicle.
After two years, we’ve learned a thing or two about how to make the most out of our RV experience! In partnership with RVshare, I polled our crew and put together our top tips for living comfortably, yet practically in your RV during your next music festival adventure.
Start with the RV
As soon as we bought our festival tickets, we popped onto the RVshare website several months before the event. We wanted to find one that had a bed for each person in our crew plus an extra one just in case we had a friend tag along at the end. We also looked for an RV with an awning. Your home base is not only where you eat and sleep, but you can escape and cool off from the sun. Finally, we didn’t want to spend too much time on the road picking up our RV, so we found one less than 45 minutes from home so we could go pick it up and bring it to our house to load up. Which brings me to my next tip…
Prepare your food ahead of time
Last year, we brought a long a flat top grill. I chopped up onions, peppers, and cauliflower so we could easily throw them on the grill with different frozen meats we brought like burgers, marinated chicken tenders, and potstickers. We loaded our fridge with other easy items like lunch meat, salsa, hummus, cut fruit, and juices. We not only had an easier time cooking for a crowd, but we never felt bogged down by fried festival food. We saved money in the long-run, too!
Bring a Flyswatter or Saltgun
With doors opening and closing, you’re bound to welcome in some friends. The food and light inside will attract them. They won’t want to leave. Over a four or five day period, they’ll drive you nuts. We had to ask neighbors to a fly swatter. Another set of neighbors had a salt gun, too! That was fun and efficient. It really saved us.
Bring a flag to find your RV anytime
We didn’t learn this lesson until after the first year. Fortunately, our neighbors brought flags. Your RV is in a field of other RVs. They all look a little bit the same, especially in the dark. You may leave during the day, but you’ll be coming home at night and maybe not in the sharpest mental state. Having a flag or some other tall structure to mark your spot is so helpful and pretty critical during those hours when you’re inching towards the sweet comfort of your bed.
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Find another RV to share space with
During the first year, we were fortunate enough to know a couple headed to the festival. They are long-time RV owners and festival goers. That allowed us to create a sort of safe space between our RVs and combine forces with our grill, decorations, chairs, and tents. We met friends at the festival the previous year, too. We kept in touch thanks to my brother and they parked next to us again this year. We felt like we were waking up and coming home to a big family every day. We felt safe and there was always someone to hangout with.
Make it yours
It’s no fun if you aren’t comfy. For the outdoors, bring several outdoor carpets, chairs, bean bags, blow up couches, a few tables for food and drinks, and a tent. String lights, flags, corn hole, can jam and other fun games make it yours. Inside, we brought along an essential oil diffuser, pillows and blankets from our own beds, an espresso machine, portable speakers, and all of our favorite bathroom supplies. We unloaded and positioned everything as soon as we got there so we could carry on with hanging out and enjoying each others company.
Learn how to use your RV properly
We were missing a few tricks up our sleeve this year. We never quite opened the fan in the bathroom. It started to get stinky with seven of my family members stuffed in there. We also couldn’t quite figure out how to work a bed that folded out, so we had to rearrange. We also forgot to put down our awning before we hit the road home. So many funny mishaps could have been avoided if a couple of us went to pick up the RV and learned the ropes. Next time we’ll ask a lot of questions.
Thank you again to RVshare for making this festival magical and comfortable for us. We were smiling every time we got to walk home to our RV as we watched our counterparts schlep back to their tents.
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Read this article about new ways to travel this year, including via RV.
