This is my third summer of going to music festivals. They are the best part of my summers now. In 2014, I attended my first festival in Ohio called “Grateful Fest”. It was during 4th of July weekend and it was magical. I had no idea this “world” existed and it was freeing.
When I first started dating Brian and he talked about music festivals, I said no way. “You want me to pay how much to hang out in a tent and not shower for a weekend?? Not happening.” I’m not sure what exactly changed my mind, but I decided to try it in 2014. My first camping experience was a couple of weeks before my first festival. We camped on the beach at a campground in Erie, PA. It was an amazing first experience. Not to mention, watching the sun go down over Lake Erie was beautiful. You could see a smidge of sunlight on the horizon until 10:30 PM.
Since my first festival, I make it my mission to attend as many as I possibly can from Spring through Fall. I truly love the smaller festivals more and I’m not sure I would want to go to a large festival, despite the amazing lineups. Festivals are mini vacations for me and when Winter starts, it’s a sad 6+ months for me.
I really thought I would want to write about festivals on my blog more, but then I realized, it’s more of a sacred experience. At least for me. I try to disconnect from technology so I take very few pictures. You won’t hear about specific festivals very often, but I do hope to share some. At the very least, I will write a recap of my summer of music festivals each year.
This year has been all about trying new places. We still haven’t gone to our my favorite place in Ohio, but we will in a couple of weeks. Our first festival was in Bedford, PA called Domefest. One of my favorite bands Pigeons Playing Ping Pong organized it. Unfortunately, we left after two nights. We got rained out. Maybe we shouldn’t have let a little rain spoil the fun, but we couldn’t have a campfire at our campsite and it was cold. The stage area was extremely muddy. I hate to give up especially when I waited so long and greatly anticipated this festival, but it didn’t work out. The festival had great potential and I would try going again at a different venue.
Our second festival was the Great Blue Heron Festival in New York during 4th of July weekend. It was a great experience! We found the perfect camping spot that was quiet and away from the crowded areas. Also, even with the light pollution from the festival, the stars at night were amazing. I loved the way they decorate the woods and had music at the cafe in the woods. Oh, and there were wine slushies…because, hello, it’s New York 🙂
The third festival we attended was Buffalove in New York. I was super nervous about trying a new venue again since Domefest didn’t work out as planned. Buffalove ended up being about 30 minutes from where Blue Heron was. We took off work that Friday so that we could get there early to get a good spot and ended up camping across from the DJ tent that raged until 5 AM. Despite the music until 5 AM (which is part of the experience!), it definitely was a good spot! I somehow managed to sleep through the music at the DJ tent haha.
This festival actually went through Sunday night, which in my experience is not the norm. My favorite band was scheduled to play Sunday night and I was bummed. Thursday night I checked the event page and it turned out that they had to switch a couple of bands and my favorite band ended up playing Saturday night! It was great!
We were planning on Summerdance being our next festival, but it looks like it won’t work out. We’re planning on going to a smaller festival in two weeks.
Festivals are truly my favorite part about summer. I plan on posting more with some tips for packing and surviving, so keep an eye out for those! Want to get an email when I post? Subscribe below!
Update: Since drafting this post (and I don’t want to totally edit it at this point), we attended Lazy Daisy at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park. It was a lot bigger than last year and it was a great time. I took my camera with me and still didn’t take a single picture. That’s okay. This weekend we are going to a local, small festival with friends that I couldn’t be more thrilled about :). We may or may not check out Gory at the Quarry. It depends on weather and Halloween parties. Annddd…I sprinkled this post with instagram photos from last year, except for the Blue Heron Fest photo.