Prepping for the festival, with kids

Assuming things don’t fall through, nobody’s sick, the cars still run, we’re heading to a two day festival called the Pilgrimage Music Festival in Franklin, TN this coming weekend with a 4yo and a 2yo in tow.

In my younger days I’d just hop on the motorcycle and show up, but for this (the kid part,) we probably need a list of supplies a mile long and also have to create a sleeping environment for naptime as the 2yo’s temperament turns into thrash metalhead past naptime and that’s not cool man.

My current tech plans involve tagging the oldest with the Tinitell kid’s GPS watch, and the baby with the Paby. For entertainment I’m probably going to bring along an iPad and the Fire Kids tablet as I can’t imagine there’s not going to be an hour long line to park.

To power our internet and tech needs I’m going to be bringing along an inverter and 4 rechargeable battery packs which is way more than we need but I’m anticipating someone needing a boost along the way and I’m most likely going to need to power some serious internet usage for an hour at least.

We’re taking a Radio Flyer little red wagon, which appears to be permitted, enough food and drink for them for a day in the car which we’re not allowed to bring to the fest but best to have just in case. Two short chairs for me and Kim, blanket, sunscreen, 10 diaper minimum, pack of wet wipes, multiple changes of clothes, princess folding chair, bandaids, umbrellas, rain ponchos, ear protection, and some sort of toy they can play with and not annoy people with.

I’ll be converting the back of the mannyvan into a kid snooze station, which considering the temperature is expected to be 84-86 at naptime I’m betting means I’ll be sitting in the car running it to get the temperature to non-abysmal. I’ll be adding a blanket partition and placing things on the window to block out as much light as possible.

Alternately I may just pop in a window fan and keep the interior temp in the mid 70’s. Would be nice if I knew if we were on grass or asphalt parking (temperature differences).

As there ain’t a chance in hell both of them are going to nap at the same time I’m expecting there to be roughly three hours of festival per day missed unless one of the PTFO at a show. They have no problem going to the end of the festival, but they’ll crash hard early on. Luckily we can tag team if there’s anyone we want to not miss during the day.

I’m not sure if festival with kids is going to be great or a nightmare, but the kids are old enough now and this is close enough that it’ll be interesting to see. Worst case scenario we bug out early and drive the 18 minutes home.

I’m interested to see how much we overplan this as I don’t think we’re being absurd, although it would be nice if we were for future reference. We’re going to make this work.