Back in June, I went to the FireFly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware. For those of you who don’t know, FireFly is a four day music festival; each day, starting at noon, music activities start and go on until one or two in the morning. Those attending the festival have the option to go for one day, camp in provided camping areas, or stay in nearby hotels for the course of the weekend. If you’ve never been to a festival, but want to know what it’s like, or plan on going and simply want some tips, you’ve come to the right place!
In my case, I went with two of my closest friends, as well as one of their cousins, who also happens to be a great friend of mine. We drove down from New York, and got a camping space at Firefly, our home for the long weekend.
In the weeks leading up to Firefly, we spent hours texting back and forth, making plans on who was bringing what, and what we had to buy when we got together. The day before, we met for lunch, made our shopping lists, and went grocery shopping. We made sure to buy plenty of cases of water, sandwich necessities, and late night snacks, as well as snacks loaded with protein, such as cashews, protein bars, and banana chips, which would keep us going throughout the day. That night we loaded our coolers, our car, and tried to sleep away the few hours before we left.
Dover is about three and a half hours away, and we left around seven AM. Campers could start showing up around seven, and we were worried we would get a bad camping spot due to our eleven AM arrival, but we ended up getting a good spot, next to good neighbors. We unpacked our car, set up our tent, and cracked open a bag of doritos as the skies opened, and rain started to fall. We were so lucky that that was the only rain we would see for the rest of the weekend.
Tip – Pack a tarp to put under your tent, it was our saving grace when it rained, and kept the bottom of our tent from getting wet from the ground outside. Also bring an extra tarp if your tent doesn’t have a rain proof cover, luckily ours did, but our neighbors weren’t as fortunate and had a leak in their tent later that night!
The rest of the weekend was full of laughs, music, dancing, walking, and paint. Every morning started with a walk to the porta-pottys, our own toilet paper in hand, just in case, though the bathrooms were very well maintained, to our surprise. Every morning we would wake up to the smell of eggs, and sometimes burgers, that our neighbors would offer us, but we usually just stuck to our bagels and fruit; trying to keep a little healthy for the weekend. The rest of our mornings were spent avoiding the sun, while trying to figure out which makeup we wanted to do for that day.
Tip – We regretted not bringing an EZ Up canopy with us, we simply couldn’t find it before we left. If we had brought it, though, our campsite would’ve been ten degrees cooler, and we probably wouldn’t have tired as quickly as we did throughout the day.
The most wonderful thing about Firefly was the feeling of not caring. You could’ve showed up naked if the rules permitted, and no one would’ve judged you for it. It made trying new and different outfits and makeup styles easy, and made you feel comfortable with the people around you. In the words of my friend Alli, “This is the only place in America where people are comfortable enough to be themselves,” and she hit it out of the park with that statement. Every day we painted our faces with acrylic paint from AC Moore, plastered on colorful eye shadows, and wore pieces from our closets we never felt comfortable enough to wear at home, but bought on a whim anyway.
Every night we would return to our campsite, exhausted from a day of dancing, singing, and running back and forth between stages to see different performers. *Tip – Don’t bring shoes you like. You’re going to be walking, jumping, and getting your feet stepped on for eight hours four days straight! Bring an old pair of sneakers you wouldn’t mind throwing out after the festival. I said goodbye to an old pair of converse Sunday night as left.
We took lots of pictures, and saw some of our favorite bands. There were over fifty musical artists at Firefly this year, and each one we saw was unique and amazing in its own way. Firefly does a good job of getting a wide array of musicians of all genres to come, which made the days more fun and adventurous. At the end of the weekend, our top ten favorite musicians we saw were as followed, in no particular order:
The 1975, Ellie Goulding, Deadmau5, Florence and the Machines, ASAP Rocky,
Blink-182, Mumford and Sons, Of Monsters and Men, Major Lazer, and Grouplove
Up until Firefly, I didn’t even think I liked some of those artists, such as ASAP and Major Lazer, but each one put on an amazing show, creating a memory that’ll last a lifetime.
Throughout the weekend, we saw and heard a lot of music, but the best part were the memories we created together. I would recommend going to a music festival, especially Firefly to anyone, because if I survived, you can too!