I camped at Coachella. And made a terrible mistake.

We made spreadsheets, doled out duties and packed my Prius to a comfortable brim. We thought we had everything covered until the day before the festival, when the most rookie of mistakes was made. Due to a regrettable error, I entered Coachella on the first day without knowing where or how I was going to go to sleep that evening.

Ask anyone who has ever subjected themselves to three days of music in the California desert, and they’ll tell you a thing or two about a Coachella miracle.

Coachella camping 101

Although the music festival launched in 1999, camping outside the Coachella perimeter started in 2003.   

Since then, an entire subculture of advice has cropped up devoted to preparing each camper for the flat grass field. This public Google spreadsheet called Coachella Essentials made its way to me before the festival and was an excellent resource to run through while packing. Many media outlets also publish their version of how-tos. 

What separates Coachella from most other camping festivals is the setting. The desert community of Indio, California, in April is beginning to heat up for the summer, and concealing yourself from the relentless sun is the most crucial element while preparing. 

The other natural factors to consider are the wind and dust. Packing tissues, moisturizer and saline nasal spray is important, but dirt boogers are inevitable. Even Sunday’s headliner Frank Ocean opined about his dusty days as a festival attendee while on stage April 16: “I hated the dust out here,” he told the audience. “I always left with a respiratory infection.”

Campers are allowed to arrive Thursday morning before the festival starts, and they can roll in until 9 p.m. each night before Sunday. The lines of cars shuffling into the flat fields can stretch for hours sometimes — due in part to an extensive search of the cars for a long list of prohibited items. No drugs, no beer kegs and no mirrors are allowed inside.

Each car is guided to a 15-foot-by-10-foot site, which is large enough for two vehicles back to back. It’s like a mullet for glamping: car in front, party in the back. The most crucial item is a canopy to block the sun. Everything else is extra for enhancing your stay. Some people hang tapestries on the sides of their lots for privacy, but that impedes connecting with your neighbors, arguably the highlight of Coachella camping. 

There’s a general store on site, a truck selling ice drives around each day, and there are late-night services like a silent disco hub. Walking around the grounds, it becomes clear that there are two types of people who attend Coachella: boys who don’t even try to dress up for the occasion, and everyone else. 

Disaster in the desert

I drove my car to the Southern California desert Wednesday, and my girlfriend and friend flew out Thursday afternoon. They rented a Tesla at LAX for us to use at the campsite (shoutout to the car’s “camp mode,” which maintained a cool temperature inside the vehicle for two of us to sleep in) and then grocery shopped at H-Mart. The meal planning theme was Korean Americana featuring kimchi hotdogs and Spam fried rice.

While waiting for their arrival at a Walmart parking lot in Indio Thursday afternoon, I observed a rotating flock of festival campers loading up on last-minute gear. The tent aisle inside was nearly depleted of its stock, while the cheap sunglasses rack spun perpetually with folks nabbing an extra pair. Anticipation was palpable.

That’s when I received the phone call that sank my stomach. 

Our friend who purchased the camping pass forgot it back in the Bay Area. Along with his festival wristband ticket. It dawned on him the moment they landed in Los Angeles, and he spent the drive to Indio frantically calling Stub Hub for any support. He was told there was nothing they could do.

Day zero for any music festival with camping, which is typically the Thursday leading up to the event, is a unique atmosphere. At Coachella, a miniature community sprouts up in the desert. Numerous rows of vehicles, buses and canopies line up in a polo field across multiple sections to form an overnight town. Once the tent is staked into the ground and the canopy is secured from the wind, it’s time to mingle with neighbors and crack open that bottled-up excitement.

Instead, I sat with not knowing how we’d resolve this snafu in a dusty parking lot about 3 miles from the entrance to the campground. It would require a herculean effort to undo this logistical nightmare.

A true weekend hero

After my crew of two arrived, we transferred all the gear from my car into the camping Tesla. We decided to cut our losses for the night and stayed at a hotel. It was 11 p.m., but the Embassy Suites in La Quinta near the festival was abuzz with revelers. 

The next morning as we prepared for the day by applying the inaugural layer of sunblock, I overheard a girl near the pool laughing on the phone about how she knew someone who forgot their pass at home. Her sneers cut deep, but evidently this problem is more common than we had thought. Over breakfast at the hotel, we hatched a solution. 

My friend’s wife is pregnant, in her third trimester, so she sat this festival out at their home. Acting as the true hero of the weekend, she rushed to FedEx to mail the passes via express shipping. We were quoted a 6 p.m. arrival time that night. 

Since my girlfriend and I had our festival bracelets on our wrists already, we left for Coachella before it opened at noon, with our friend’s blessing. He was left bellying up to the hotel bar to wait out the clock. 

We were the first crop of people to enter the festival and rushed over to the pop-up record shop, where there were rumors of a coveted Frank Ocean album for sale. Turns out it was for sale — but just that single copy was available. 

Later that night before the Gorillaz took the main stage, our friend called to say he had successfully received the FedEx package and was bound for the festival. He arrived just in time (before “Feel Good Inc.”) and we toasted to our delayed win.

Gaming the return policy, or, how Jeff Bezos subsidizes Coachella

Both car camping and tent camping costs about $150 plus fees. If you splurge for “preferred camping,” which places you in a spot closest to the entrance, that runs $375 plus fees. 

When he’s not forgetting his festival passes back home, my friend is extremely bright and a hard worker who prefers some of the finer delights on life’s menu. He insisted on preferred camping, and the extra cost allowed us to skip the hassle of traversing rows of thousands of cars to instead set up camp merely a few rows from the festival’s entrance. 

It’s a small luxury, but one worth relishing after walking nearly 24,000 steps on April 14 alone, according to my Apple Health app.

What the extra $225 in preferred camping also buys you is a sonic boom alarm clock around 9 a.m. each morning. 

Since the camping section abuts the Sahara Stage — often the site for bombastic EDM — I was stirred awake by sound check and the occasional bass drop. I appreciated the blast jolting me awake that nearly rivaled a cup of coffee.

My favorite aspect of camping at a festival are the spontaneous friendships that form with your neighbors. We were flanked by a pair of kind dudes from San Francisco who rented a truck off Turo to serve as their entire operation (they even slept in it), as well as a large group from Oklahoma City who stayed at an Airbnb offsite but reserved their campsite for pre- and postgame socializing. Sharing and mixing with our neighbors was endless. 

Walking out to the portabloe toilets is when you can easily spot the veterans who’ve mastered the art of Coachella camping. I spoke with one person who purchased most of their gear off Amazon — camping shower, canopies, sleeping mat and more — with the intention of returning everything after the weekend, essentially bilking Jeff Bezos. I may never know if that system was effective, but the notion of undermining one of the world’s wealthiest humans to subsidize your enjoyment of a music festival is a rich afterthought. 

A unique benefit for camping during Weekend 1 of the two-weekend festival is that the polo fields are much more pristine the first time around. After a long weekend with humans trotting around the premises, the ground begins to brown out. And your feet get really, really dirty.

Evidently, the grass is indeed greener for Weekend 1, Coachella-goers.

Quick-fire camping tips

-Choose an easy-to-use canopy to avoid laboriously reading the instructions in the dark and struggling to set it up.
-Pick a theme for meal prep, and set aside a special snack for when you come back after the festival each night.
-Plot your Monday departure time early and stick to it. We woke up at 5 a.m. and were on the road by 6 a.m., beating all the traffic.
-Pack string lights or holiday lights to enhance the mood at your campsite. Packing a large battery for them (and to charge your phone) is also optimal.
-And finally, before you leave for the festival, send one final “does everybody have their passes” to the group text thread … trust me.