Costs: $200 for a ticket, $120 for camping (no electricity), $35 for a camping pass, and $30 for gas; not to mention the ridiculous amount of money spent on booze, food, and festival clothing. You cram all your stuff into your friend’s minivan while attempting to leave just enough leg space. When you arrive, a minimum of three hours later, you build your home consisting of an old tent your dad had tucked away and a rusted awning.

Yet somehow, over the span of only five days, your tent flooded from the rain, the awning tarp ripped from the wind, your clothes are soaked, you lost one shoe and your favorite hat, someone left the sandwich meat out in the sun, the air mattress deflated, and you misplaced your friend… again.

Yet regardless of all these inevitable obstacles, you promise on your long journey home that you’ll return the next year. So what is it about festivals that make you ignore the constant struggle of surviving on flashlights and port-a-potties, that keeps you faithfully returning?

It is listening to the radio and declaring to the nearest person, “I am going to hear this live!” for the twelfth time. It is crossing out each day on the calendar countdown. It is scrolling through your camera roll of past festivals laughing over the memories. It is the excitement of finding your tiny campsite in the open field and seeing the cute girls a row over or the hot boy four sites to the left.

It is shamelessly dancing through the crowd. It is sitting on your friend’s shoulders to see the stage. And of course, it is the explosion of happiness when the lights finally blast through the night and create a halo of glory around your favorite band.

Festivals are not supposed to be an ideal experience; instead, they are a literal survival of the fittest. Your ability to start partying at ten in the morning and make it 12 hours for the headliner, without passing out in a lawn chair, is where the true stories emerge because the memories lie within the struggles. Having to hold your tent up from the inside as the storm passes over only made playing ring of death more interesting or having to ask your neighbors for duct tape to fix your tarp allowed you to meet some of your best friends.

You are able to brag that you did not merely go to a single concert but instead camped four nights in a lopsided tent, lived off granola bars and dry cereal, and witnessed numerous talented artists. You met an endless amount of new and interesting characters, strangers quickly became friends (some you still do not know their names), and you sang until you lost your voice to all those songs, that just prior, only existed on the radio.

The obstacles are trivial to the excitement of the festival vibe. It is the memories of facing each barrier with a humble smile (and a beer) that makes you eager to return. The money and travel are minimal compared to five days of music, dancing, and friends because festivals are meant to be an adventure—one that you can never really prepare for.