🎟️ Bonnaroo 2023

Happy Roo 2023!

Welcome to our blog! Mara and Brandon here! Ready to dive deep into the Bonnaroo experience with us? Get ready for an adventure packed with music, laughter, and memories to last a lifetime - the good and the bad 😬.

Getting Ready

I, Mara, attended Bonnaroo in 2015 and again in 2018. Since Brandon had never been to the festival but had introduced me to much more of the music scene than I ever had been, I wanted to share this experience with him. Year 2023’s lineup held more artists that we like than they had in the past, so we decided this was the year to go.

Getting the bus built was the main way we got ready, as it was our goal to have it completed and move-in ready by this date. Although we didn’t finish, we did have walls, space for our camping gear, and hammock hooks in the back - I still miss them sometimes😂. Did I mention we got our door installed the night before. As with every camping trip or festival, I also write out all the days we will be traveling and make meal plans for each day. I’ve found this is the easiest way for me to make sure we don’t go hungry or without protein (or caffeine lol). Usually travel days get an “out to eat” plan. From there, I will grocery shop and meal prep in the days before so all we have to do is cook on site.

Having the bus and not needing a tent was a blessing and it drastically cut down on how much we needed to pack. Once we were packed up, we just had to gas up and get there!

Tuesday: The Trip North

Coming from Georgia, it was 155.5 mi to our destination, Manchester, TN. This first drive with our stuff in it really showed us how much the bus bounced while we drove. We were still yellow at this point in the build. Although the estimated drive time was 2.5hrs, we started our journey at 10:30am and finally arrived in our spot at 9:36pm. We needed ice and our GPS did us dirty. It said the Twice the Ice was on our route when in fact it was 45 minutes the opposite direction. So a 1.5hr detour, to then finally start in the right direction. We also got pulled over by a cop while halfway through TN - I suspect because we were still yellow - because once he saw our papers, he let us go. It was an event that eclipsed a lot of our experience.

Finally pulling up to the Farm and seeing the signs for the festival started to lift our hearts. It was a tough first ride, I won’t lie. After pulling in to our spot, we went to explore! The main gates didn’t open till Thursday but there was plenty to see all around us and in the different camping groups. We found a trippy statue forest, hung out around the arch, and also explored the Wompy Woods.

Wednesday June 14

What’s a better way of waking up at your campground to the smell of coffee, some tunes, and a killer chicken peppers onions rice bowl? This was only the first day of receiving envious looks from passerby as they went to go find a food tent 😏. We spent most of the day relaxing and getting into the camping groove, exploring our surroundings and just unwinding from the sprint we had just done building the bus.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/94cc4d_6eaf7f15e23f4815adb43d7dfccd774f/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Thursday June 15

Day 1

[Daily Bread | Liquid Stranger | Zed’s Dead]

We realized on our first night in how the festival atmosphere was different than we were used to. A lot more people were there to say they were there than actually enjoying the music. As we are trying to enjoy the sets we wanted to see, we were constantly jostled by people coming in and out of the crowd or just talking loudly about not festival things.

Daily Bread was a really fun set, and both Liquid Stranger and Zed’s Dead always throw down so overall we had a fun night.

Until we got back to the bus. Another hard lesson, we had left a fan running and it completely drained our solar batteries. This was the first time it happened so we thought “well, f*ck but it’ll turn back on in the morning”.

Friday June 16

Day 2

[Portugal. The Man | Three 6 Mafia | Peekaboo | GRiZ | Boogie T b2b Dirt Monkey b2b SubDocta | Subtronics]

We spent the morning troubleshooting our solar system, as the sun failed to restart our system. Over the course of researching and calling the solar company, (and a lot of help from our dad-friends camping next to us) we realized we would need a battery jump start or a wall plug-in in order to turn the system back on. The sun is just not strong enough to kick start the whole system. The dads offered to let us use their generators to charge the batteries until we realized we had a marine 50 amp plug instead of a standard RV 50 amp plug (yes they are different). This was very disappointing as we were very excited to camp with power and fans in the scorching heat of the Farm. It also presented more of a problem: our fridge was fully stocked. We ended up rotating bags of ice inside the freezer and fridge to keep things cool so we lost minimal food.

One of the best parts of walking around festivals is getting to see all the art, in my opinion.

This day’s lineup was a bit more stacked but the sun made it difficult to appreciate the groups that went before dark. I enjoy Portugal. The Man however the energy of their performance was lacking. Brandon appreciates Three 6 Mafia but again the performance was more pandering to the crowd than their actual talent. The rest of the night was justification enough for the whole trip. Peekaboo is always such a fun experience. To see GRiZ was a bucket list item. The triple Back2Back literally melted our minds and then Subtronics wrapped it up in a beautiful, wonky bow.

It had rained so the pathways were a bit muddy. The horse cops helped show the way and became affectionately known as “Muddy Buddy”. “Hey Buddy, it’s muddy.” “It’s muddy, buddy.” And variations of that have bloomed from the experience.

Saturday June 17

Day 3

[Sheryl Crow | GRiZ Sunset Set]

Sheryl Crow - cause why not? She has so many classics that it was fun to sing along, even if we were baking in the sun.

GRiZ replaced Rainbow Kitten Surprise last minute and blessed us with a sunset set that I have listened to at least 20 times now.

You can too: https://soundcloud.com/griz/chasing-the-golden-hour-live-at-bonnaroo-2023?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

While at his set, we witnessed someone’s foot split open from him being barefoot for what looked like the whole time. Gross lol

One thing about Bonnaroo that I’m sure a lot of people love is that it is a “Music & Arts” festival. It draws many different genres and types of people all to intermingle. That means if you like more specific genres, you might be left with less than you’d like. We felt this way after our favorites had performed and we were just holding out for one performance.

Sunday June 18

Day 4

[Paramore]

Paramore was ultimately a disappointment. I said what I said.😠

I made us wait the last two days of the festival, just to see her perform. Seeing videos from the past, we expected quite a performance, especially since she effectively closed out Bonnaroo. What we got was a tired singer and a tired band. It seemed wishy washy. I was missing the heart of it. We stayed for most of it but by the end I was so upset about the lack of performance from someone I had built up that we decided to go back to camp early.

Monday: Driving Home

As I said, we were kinda ready to go after the second day’s lineup. We really didn’t jive with the waves of people that weren’t there to enjoy the music (isn’t that the whole point of a festival?) and the lineup petered out for us as well. We were very ready to go and got a dancing man farewell on our way out.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/94cc4d_8f90a56e46a84580a5b0e36560fd8f35/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Thankfully we made it home with no issues!

Thank you for joining us on this journey of a lifetime. We hope our blog inspires you to embrace your own spirit of adventure and discover purpose in everything you do.

Until next time, happy trails!