My Camping Music Festival Guide

It’s festival season and I’m so excited to bring you my ultimate camping music festival guide! I love a good concert or music festival, but my absolute favorites are multi-day festivals where you camp onsite at night. There’s just something so freeing and out-of-the-ordinary about festivals.

But really enjoying a camping music festival can take a little planning. So I’m here to share my top tips to make the camping enjoyable, the festival fun, and to ensure you have a really great time. Read on!

The Camping Part of the Ultimate Camping Music Festival Guide

The first thing you’ll do when you arrive at the festival is park your car and haul all your stuff to the campsite. My first tip is to pack light, and I’ve included a packing list with links to all our camping gear below for you.

Then, I recommend you set up some shade at your campsite. Some people bring a pop-up four-post tent, but those are very heavy. We prefer a light-weight lean-to like this one.

Pack water, and bring a jug you can use to refill your water bottles. We carry big Hydroflask bottles, and right when we get camp set up we start chugging that water.

Then it’s time for a snack. In terms of food and drinks, we usually pack some premade food we can cook at camp and lots of snacks. Some of my favorite camping snacks are Kettle Chips, pretzels, homemade trail mix, and Fig Newtons.

Pack canned beer and boxed wine. You need to avoid glass at the campsite. One of my favorite summer camping beers is Oberon Ale from Bell’s Brewery, but you also can’t go wrong with Miller High Life or PBR. We usually buy Winking Owl, Bota Box, or Bandit from Aldi. And I enjoy the Underwood canned wines as well.

Once you’re settled in you need to figure our your ice situation for your cooler. We have a cheap cooler that we literally found abandoned at a tailgate for free, and it’s so cheap the ice won’t last the whole camping trip. Early on we track down the station where we can purchase fresh ice, which is usually right inside the camping area.

As for cooking food, we bring a propane-powered cookstove. We found a 50-year old vintage Coleman cookstove at a Salvation Army and that’s usually what we bring camping. But for a small festival camping trip we just bring a portable backpacking stove.

We like to bring some prepared food that is easy to heat up on the cookstove. This saves you from having to prep food and really “cook” at the campsite, instead you’re basically just reheating. This time we did burritos with rice and beans, cheese, and lots of veggies. Then we just cooked them on a cast iron griddle. Easy!

For breakfast, we cracked a bunch of eggs into jars at home and pre-shredded and seasoned some potatoes. Then in the morning we could dump the eggs, potatoes, and some cheese into the griddle and make an omelette type thing. No cutting, no shredding, no worrying about cleaning things, and no waste to dispose of at the campsite. For more recipe inspiration, here’s a link to Fresh Off the Grid, my favorite camp cooking blog.

We have just discovered the joy of the backpacking hammock and now can’t be without it on camping trips. Our hammock ties between two trees so we can tie it up almost anywhere.

It was almost 100 degrees the whole weekend of this festival, so we often took naps in the hammock during the hottest part of the day before music got started in the late afternoon.

Good morning!

It’s Day 2 of the music festival! Morning is actually one of my favorite times in the festival grounds because of the cool, cozy tempetrues. Plus, I love campstove coffee and breakfast.

To prep for breakfast, I grind coffee beans at home and we make either percolator or French press coffee at the campsite. This time we did percolator coffee, which is the most low maintenance method. Basically, you put the coffee grounds in a basket and pour water into the jug. Then you put the percolator on the camp stove and it heats up to a boil. You’ll know the coffee is ready to taste when the water that comes up to the lid is brown. Then we just sip it to taste and let it keep going until it’s strong enough.

Breakfast is our favorite eggs and hashbrowns meal!

I usually bring something to read, but maybe that’s just me! As you know if you watch My Morning Coffee ritual on Instagram I am a big morning routine person, so reading for a little bit in the morning while I’m at camp makes me feel like I’m at home.

Remember, one of the most important parts of slow travel is to feel a little bit at home wherever you are.

The Festival Part of the Ultimate Camping Music Festival Guide

Now you’ve got the camping down (don’t forget, that gear list is down below), so let’s chat through the festival part of this whole music festival thing.

I love music festivals. These photos are from Hinterland, a festival I’ve attended for the past several years. I actually just posted a playlist of my favorite bands I’ve seen play live at festivals, so if you’re curious the type of festivals I enjoy, go give that a listen. One of my favorite parts of the festival is the people watching and the fashion.

You can get really wild with festival dressing, and I LOVE to see what everyone wears. I like to dress comfortably because I know the days will be hot and long. My style is naturally very vintage, crunchy-granola, so my clothes translate well to the festival grounds.

Here I’m wearing a vintage skirt, vintage thshirt, some space buns, oodles of dry shampoo, a bandanna, and 10-year old Arizona Birkenstocks.

Once inside the grounds you have to decide if you’re a ‘dance by the stage’ type of person, or ‘lounge in the crowd’ type of person. I’m definitely a lounge in the crowd type of person. We bring lots of old thrifted blankets to lay out on the ground, and we just recently got an “airchair” as a wedding present and we LOVE it for festivals.

During the day, I like to tie my hair up to keep it off my face and neck. I wear tons of sunscreen, of course, and I tie a scarf in my hair so it covers my part and I don’t have to put sunscreen on my scalp.

Here I’m wearing a vintage denim skirt, a tshirt from a brewery in my neighborhood, a vintage headscarf, a thrifted mini-backpack, and my good ole Birkenstocks.

I love wearing a tshirt from something local so other people who are from my city will maybe stop and say to hello. A mini backpack is so much easier to wear than a purse at the festival grounds. Mine closes with a drawstring and a clasp so it’s secure.

Like I mentioned back in the camping section, we usually eat our breakfast and lunch at the campsite, but we will treat ourselves to food trucks and ice cream cones once inside the festival grounds for the night. If you can at least prepare some of your food yourself it’s a great way to save money at a music festival.

But I can’t resist a good fairground corndog!

My Gear & Packing List:

Here’s that packing list for your camping music festival. All the linked products are the actual items we have for camping, or items that are on our wishlist. Some we have found second-hand, so keep an eye out when you’re in the thrift stores.

• Tent
• Sleeping bag
• Pillows
• Sleeping pad
• Shade lean-to
• Camping chairs
• Coolers and ice
• Portable battery charger
• Hammock
• Air chair
• Trail pack OR larger camping pack
• All-purpose, biodegradable soap
• Towels
• Tin cup
• Stove
• Coffee percolator
• Head lamp
• Hydroflasks
• Plates, forks, spoons from home
• Sunscreen
• Dry shampoo
• Toothbrush/toothpaste/mouthwash
• Wet wipes
• Hand sanitizer
• Benedryl, Tylenol, Aloe Vera
• Baby powder
• Chapstick
• Vaseline
• Hair ties
• Clothes
• Chacos and Birkenstocks

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Cheers!

I hope you find this camping music festival guide helpful. Enjoy your camping trips and music festivals this summer. Let’s chat soon on Instagram or Twitter, where I’m @brumeanddaisy. I can’t wait to hear what you’re up to.

Peace & love, Emily