Music Festival Camping — What I Learned at Camp Redwoods
I have been to a lot of festivals. This one touched my soul.
Some of California's most beautiful redwood trees frame the setting of Camp Redwoods. There are two primary stages, both built within the trees, and the amphitheater is one of the most breathtaking places I have ever stood. There were several performances where the combination of the setting and the music brought tears to my eyes — the light coming down through the redwoods, the sound of the trees touching each other, and this feeling that you'd stumbled into somewhere man shouldn't exist. This one moved me. It was magical.
We're already planning next year, which is really why I'm writing this. Because the weekend is so special, and the logistics are not automatic — and if you know what the weekend actually asks of you, you get to spend your attention on the trees and taking it all in, instead of on your gear.
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You are dry camping, for the most part.
There are cabins, but those are mainly for the artists. There are RVs, limited car camping, teepees but mostly it's tent camping. We were in a rented RV, and it made less difference than you'd think — because there are no hookups.
That's the thing to understand before you pack. This is all by design. You're there to unplug and unwind purposely. The campground provides restrooms and showers, but don't rely on the camp for soap, towels, bedding or phone charges. There is intermittent wi-fi. Plan and prepare accordingly to bring what you need to be comfortable for three days.
The water is real, and it changes how you plan
The outdoor cedar showers at Camp Redwoods are extraordinary. They have a few set among the actual cedars, open to the sky, so you're standing there looking straight up into the trees.
Having said that, Camp Redwoods is in California, which means drought most of the time. Water restrictions can be the norm especially in the summer months. During our weekend, festival officials asked us to hold off on showering for a good part of the day Saturday. Restrooms were closed intermittently while water replenished. There are porta potties, but the constraint was real.
None of that ruined anything. It just means that if you're planning for a campout like this, water is a variable and not a given — Baby wipes and hand sanitizer are handy here.
The point here is to do your bit not to waste water or litter (you need to bring your trash home with you).
Bring and use only what you need, and you'll have an easier weekend. That's the single planning change I'm making for next year, ahead of any piece of gear.
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Everything you bring, you carry — and the stages are a walk
Your car isn't sitting next to you, and the campsites are a genuine distance from the stage area. That distance is the thing that quietly shapes every packing decision, because you make that trip more than once a day and at least once in the dark.
In a driveway with the trunk open, one more thing is free. On site, one more thing is another trip across uneven ground. A pedal bike changes that math more than any single piece of gear — it turns the walk from a factor into nothing you think about. If you bring one, be honest about the surface: a camp road is graded dirt, there are trails for those more adventurous but for just the trips to the car and back, something that is compact is what lets it travel in a car that's already full.
The same logic makes anything doing two jobs worth more than something marginally better at one. A power station with a light built into the housing. A bag that unzips flat into a blanket. When you're carrying it in yourself, that's the calculation.
No hookups means you generate your own power, or you go without
Everything you brought runs on a battery, and nothing charges for three days. A power bank isn't the answer on its own — it runs down and stays down, and then you're rationing, and rationing means the moment you'd have photographed doesn't get photographed. What actually works is something that puts charge back in while you're off at a stage, which means a panel and not just a battery. Check the ports too. One unit running the phones, the speaker and the camera beats three bricks to keep track of.
Your phone is your ticket, your map, your camera, and how you find your people in a forest full of tents. It's also the first thing to die.
Warm days, cold nights, and dark that arrives under the canopy
It runs warm to hot through the day and drops to cool or cold at night — both, every day, and the gap is wider than the afternoon lets you believe.
If you're tent camping, the specifications that matter are the ones people skip. Freestanding, so the tent holds its shape on rooted uneven ground where a stake won't go and you can move it when you've misjudged the slope. A floor rated higher than the fly, because under a canopy the water comes up from underneath. Two doors and roof vents, because a tent that's been in full sun since ten is uninhabitable by two. And a layer under your sleeping bag, not just a warmer bag — the ground pulls heat out of you all night regardless of what you're wrapped in, and it's the layer everyone leaves out.
For light: hands-free beats a phone torch, and the specification that decides it is weight, not brightness. A headlamp that bounces gets taken off, and a headlamp in your pocket does nothing. It gets properly dark under those trees.
What I'd do differently next year
Less clothing than I think I need. That's first and then power that regenerates rather than power I'm spending down.
And less of everything else. The camp kitchen is optional — there's a cafe on site with meal plans, and a camp kitchen isn't one item, it's a stove, fuel, pots, plates, wash-up and the water to wash up with, carried in by hand. I'd rather spend that trip on sleeping better.
Because here's the actual lesson from Camp Redwoods: the gear is only there to get out of the way. The reason to plan carefully is so that when you're standing in an amphitheater surrounded by redwoods with the light coming down and the music going, nothing you own is on your mind.
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