My Definition:People go on road trips for many different reasons. Some take to the road to visit relatives for the holidays, while others may take to the road to start a new job in a new city. Some people even simply view the road as a means of transportation and nothing more. However, to me a road trip is something much more meaningful and transformational. When boiled down to its core, my definition of a road trip is a temporary escape, filled with new places and experiences, which serves to strengthen a friendship. This summer I will be embarking on a musically themed road trip with my best friend that will allow us the chance to travel the country, attend hundreds of shows, meet fellow music lovers and most importantly bond through our experiences on the road.
Background: My name is Katrina and I am a music-aholic. Music is my addiction, my therapy and my one true passion. I’ve always believed that I can endure anything life throws in my path as long as I’m equipped and ready with my loaded iPod. I hope to someday make a career out of this passion by working in the music industry, most likely in marketing and promotions. Having grown up right outside Austin, I’ve attended countless concerts and music festivals throughout my life, almost always accompanied by my best friend and faithful sidekick, Yvonne. We have always shared the same taste in music and a love of the intoxicating music experience that comes from seeing our favorite bands live in concert.
Unfortunately, after Yvonne and I graduated high school we went our separate ways- I remained in the Austin area to attend UT and she moved to go to school in Los Angeles on a swimming scholarship. As a result, I lost my favorite concert companion and now only get to see her a couple times a year. For this reason, Yvonne and I will be reunited as music pals this summer by traveling around the country to attend five major music festivals in cities from coast to coast. This adventure illustrates my definition of a road trip because it serves as a way for my best friend and I to get away from our daily lives, and grow closer through our experiences on the road and our love for music, all the while visiting new places and meeting other music lovers around the country. I will also be creating a blog called “ iDrive” that will chronicle our cross-country journey, include pictures and videos from the various music festivals we attend, and even have playlists from our own iPods that we listen to on the road.
Where We're Going:I did some research and came up with a laundry list of music festivals taking place this summer around the country ranging from music genres of alternative rock, indie, country and electronic. Yvonne and I have always had a very broad taste in music and I figure if we are taking the summer to explore music festivals, we might as well hit stops with an array of genres and music types. I wanted to attend festivals rather than individual concerts because I feel, for this particular trip, we are able to get more bang for our buck through big festivals because they generally take place over a 3-day weekend and usually host over one hundred different bands and artists. I also sought to find events that were taking place all over the country so we would have a chance to get in maximum road tripping experience and the chance to see places in the U.S. we have never visited before. Additionally, I had to coordinate dates of the festivals to make sure we would have enough time to travel and enjoy the journey from city to city between events since we will be traveling only by car.
I was able to narrow my list down to five festival stops. The trip will be 11 weeks total, with us driving 8,139 miles between all five of our stops. Our first destination will be “Sasquatch! Music Festival” in George, Washington taking place from May 29-31. From Washington we will be heading to Nashville, Tennessee for the, you guessed it, “Country Music Association (CMA) Music Festival” from June 10-13. After getting in touch with our Southern roots we’ll head up to “Summerfest” in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from June 24- July 4. From there we will head to New York during the weekend of July 15-17 for “Camp Bisco”, an electronic music festival. Our final stop of the trip will be in Chicago, Illinois for the infamous “Lollapalooza” taking place August 6-8. Deaf and exhausted, we will finally make our way back home to Austin just in time for school to start in the fall.
Feasibility:You probably realized that we are not taking the most direct route, as we had to follow the chronology of the different music festival dates. But nonetheless, by the time this trip is all said and done we will have traveled around the majority of the country, and stopped in five new cities that neither of us had ever visited before. I cannot say that any one of the five stops is any more important or special than the others. We have not set dates for our resting stops between the festivals. We are creating a tentative lodging plan based on festival dates but days between festivals are subject for flexibility and spontaneity. This allows for our road trip to have some structure, but also be accommodating to exciting things that cross our paths that we would be unable plan for.
As I mentioned earlier, we will be driving by car for the entire trip- in my gas-friendly white 2002 Toyota Corrola. We will be stopping along the trip and seeking shelter from the road in a variety of ways. Two of the music festivals allow for camping on the actual festival grounds. So for Sasquatch! and Camp Bisco we will be pitching a tent and spending those weekends sleeping outdoors, under the stars. Also, between the two of us we have various family members and friends throughout the country that will serve as rest stops along our journey.
Additionally, I have found many promising hosts on the couchsurfing network for some of our other stops- but only couches of girl hosts that seem legitimate. We will be couchsurfing in Boise, ID; Rapid City, SD; Nashville, TN and Cleveland, OH. This will give us a way to meet new people who can show us around their home cities. All of these housing options will help save us money along the trip, and in the case that we can’t pre-arrange every stop we can always splurge for a cheap motel, which is why I have allotted $1,000 for “emergency lodging”.
Seeing as how I intend to keep our living expenses as low as possible, the large cost of this trip will come from gas, food and festival passes. The weekend passes for each of these events range from $33- $175, but considering the large number of bands we will be able to see at each event, the prices are relatively reasonable. The total cost of all five festival tickets totals $703 per person. This seems like a lot of money for a college student to splurge, but I have been working for the past five summers and have quite a bit saved up. Additionally, my birthday conveniently comes at the beginning of June and I intend on asking for money to go towards my summer cross-country road trip. Also gas split between the two of us will be $407 and I have set aside $1,175 for food- averaging about $15 per day. I have also decided to budget $500 for “extras”, meaning any spontaneous things that come up along the way. For example, when we stop to stay with my brother in Boulder, CO we plan on taking a white water rafting trip.
My iDrive adventure is the ultimate music lover excursion and though it will be tiring, costly and maybe even unbearable at times, it is something I have never done before. This journey will allow me to put my theoretical definition of a road trip into a real world context, as I will be temporarily escaping for the summer with my best friend to visit new places and meet new people. By having my best friend accompany me on this journey, I will not only grow in my friendship with her, but will also grow in my love for music, the road and my country.
I hope you enjoy this blog and follow along with me!
KP
