Original post author: Ryan
A few weeks after our wedding, Jessica and I went on our Honeymoon to the Hulaween music festival in Live Oak, Florida. This is the same music festival that we got engaged at in 2018. This was actually our third time going to Hulaween, and this was our first music festival since 2019.
This music festival was unbelievable. As-in, I legitimately couldn’t believe that it was happening. We left our apartment wearing masks (as was required by our property managers), flew in an airplane wearing masks, then spent four days maskless partying with tens of thousands of sweaty Floridians. It was a bizarre departure from the “new normal” that we had been living in. In hindsight, neither of us got sick, so I guess we weren’t being too careless or anything.
Below is a list of highlights and other noteworthy memories from Hulaween 2021:
Music-wise, we particularly liked the sets by electronic artists Bonobo, Chris Lake, Claude Von Stroke, and Lane 8 and the sets by live artists Jungle, Leon Bridges, and The String Cheese Incident. Honorable mention to My Morning Jacket, which we had to leave part-way through in order to see Claude.
Never miss a Saturday night String Cheese Incident festival set. Particularly at Hulaween or Electric Forest. This is when Cheese puts on an super special show.
We brought a few extra wedding bandanas (favors from our wedding) to give to other friendly attendees. This was fun to do!
We were worried that Covid would have dulled-down the festival overall; and that wasn’t really true. The size and quality of the “Spirit Lake” attraction was on-par with previous years. The lineup was also on-par, although maybe a little more sparse than the past. The music did seem to be lower volume than normal, especially on Thursday. The visual effects on the stages was definitely dialed back - but that wasn’t a big deal.
Having something to look forward to at the end of Sunday is really helpful. Sundays at festivals can be hard. The burn-out can be tough, plus it’s just sad because the festival is nearly over. We looked forward to seeing Lane 8 play on Sunday night, and it was a really great way to close out the weekend.
Having something fun to do on Monday is also really helpful. Transitioning from a festival directly back to regular life can be jarring, so we like to do a half step when possible. After Hula, we spent Monday in Epcot then caught an evening flight back to Boston.
Looking forward to going back in 2022!
Comet Catch-up! This post is related to something that happened in October 2021. I took an unplanned 16-month hiatus from blogging, and these Comet Catch-up posts cover some of the things that happened in my life during that time. Thanks for reading!