Have you ever decided to start your own festival only to find out your campsite is closing and you have two months to accomplish both moving out and the festival?

 

Yeah, I'm assuming you haven't.

 

We thrive on chaos. That's our jam.

 

This time it wasn't.

 

This time, we even got a little bit burnt out.

 

Why did we decide to take this on?

To see if we could.

 

Did we accomplish what we set out to do?

Yes we did.

 

Would we do it again?

Absolutely not. The next time we run the festival no moving anything other than festival components will be involved

 

Do we regret doing it?

Never 

 

This will be a new series about creating a festival during one of the most inopportune times possible.

 

But to explain how we ended up starting a festival, I have to go back a few years.

 

We were finished with the Airbnb and ready to try to get our first rental. First, we needed to test out the 27-foot camper and see if we could actually be in that close proximity to each other without driving ourselves insane.

 

A week would be long enough.

 

The place we found had both indoor and outdoor hot tubs,pools, nature trails, a creek you could float in, and karaoke every Friday. It also had a DJ dance every Saturday. The price was okay, and we turned out to really love it.

 

Mostly being quiet during the week meant we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

 

We also learned that we needed many, many things to keep ourselves comfortable in a 27-foot camper, and Amazon was Tony's friend that week.

 

We ended up becoming members of the resort before we even left our first stay.

 

A few times after that, we used our day passes and Tony would work poolside just because, well, we paid for it.

 

The first thing every new person we talked to told us was that we needed to come to the music festival on the last weekend of September—which happens to be my birthday weekend.

 

We had already made plans to head to New Orleans, but we did manage to go on Thursday before we headed out. It was included in the membership, so we might as well.

 

That night was Casino Night.

 

We had a lot of fun.

 

Then we took the camper to NOLA and spent my birthday on Frenchmen Street.

 

After that, we went on about life and took a few trips, mostly without the camper. Whenever we were driving through after a trip up north, we'd sometimes use our free day passes and stop by the pool.

 

Then one day, while we were sitting by the pool, Lil Bit started talking about the lots that were available part-time.

 

You could stay 15 days a month and leave the camper there the entire month for about the price of two days at what we had set our Airbnb rate.

 

The math definitely mathed.

 

We found our lot that day.

 

It was on the very last row with a view of the woods.

 

After we moved the camper there, we adopted our dog, Rosie, and she grew up on that creek.

 

Over the next three years, we turned our spot into the best little hideaway sanctuary.

 

First we rebuilt the deck, then expanded it. We tried different configurations of dog fences until we finally just turned the whole thing into a yard. We created walking paths and slowly transformed our little campsite into an amazing place to relax.

 

Then last year, we spent almost the entire year chasing festivals.

 

We went to a music festival in Florida, another in Ohio, and another in Kentucky. We even managed to add a Willie Nelson cowboy festival and a two-week medieval reenactment war.

 

It was amazing.

 

After all of that, we decided we wanted to do another international trip—but this time for longer, and we wanted to bring the dog.

 

We calculated how much that would cost and realized we wouldn't be doing any big trips this year, save for one festival in Florida.

 

So...

 

What were we going to do for an entire year?

 

We are two nomads who thrive on experiencing new things and going to new places.

 

Our campsite has a nonprofit social council that plans events and activities. We had decided to try creating a Halloween trail, and it turned out amazing. Afterward, people kept asking us about joining the social council.

 

That seemed like the perfect thing to keep us from getting bored.

 

So all this year, we've been hosting events.

 

Then the owner of the resort decided to end the music festival that had been going on there for decades.

 

We didn't want to just not have a festival.

 

So we pivoted.

 

We changed the music festival into a nature and arts festival. Instead of trying to recreate what had already existed, we would focus on what we thought made this place special.

 

I remember the owner asking if we thought we could pull it off in two months.

 

We were sure that would be easy.

 

Plenty of time for us.

 

Then, two weeks into planning and booking entertainment, he called.

 

"So, I sold the campsite. You can still have your festival though."

 

Well.

 

That changed things.

 

Now, instead of just planning a festival, we had the added stress of moving three years of our life back home, finding a new place for our camper, and shutting down the Airbnb.

 

We could have canceled the festival.

 

No one would have faulted us.

 

But we had already paid the fire dancer, booked two bands, and had vendors coming from outside the creek.

 

So we figured we might as well throw one big going-away gift for our campsite family.

 

This is the story of that.