Electric Forest 2019 was an amazing time...getting home afterwards, not so much.

Do you ever wonder how come sometimes, you can have the absolute best experience ever at an event, and then when it’s all over it seems like your world suddenly comes crashing down on you and everything that could possibly go wrong, goes wrong? I honestly never thought about stuff like that before, because such an occurrence has never happened to me. Until now. The most magical weekend of my life filled with the most amazing memories was suddenly countered by a series of unfortunate events that left me wondering “Why me? Out of the thousands of people here, why is this happening to ME?”

On Sunday night, the last night of Electric Forest, my friends and I were all going hard into the early hours of the morning, getting our money’s worth of the last night at the RV parties. I ended up separating from my group camp friends after I saw some of my new friends from Michigan who I had met on the second day. We partied until the sun came up, and when the music finally shut down, we weren’t finished yet so we went back to their group camp and hung out for a little while longer.

After a while, I started to finally feel the exhaustion come over me and I began to nod off, so my friends said I should probably head back to my camp to get some sleep before the long day of trying to get out of the festival. So I went home to Camp Rabbit Hole and ended up passing out in our common area couches until it was basically time to go and people were packing up. It was after I woke up that the nightmare began.

My best friend Hudson, who came with me to the festival, came up to me asking me for the keys to our rental car because he had to charge his phone. As soon as he asked me for them, I already knew what happened and I replied with a frustrated laugh, “I don’t have the keys dude, you took them from me last night before we went to the RVs and you never gave them back and I didn’t see you for the rest of the night.” He stood there in silence for a good minute and the look on his face said it all. It was at that point that he knew he had fucked up big time. The only word he uttered was “Fuck.” before leaving me to go search frantically for the keys.

So there I was, mind racing at a hundred miles per hour trying to think of all the possible outcomes of this situation. I think at that point, I knew deep down that we would end up being the very last people from our camp there, and probably some of the very last people from the festival, period. And the more I thought about that possibility, the more stressed out I got with the situation and the more frustrated I got with my very aloof and absent-minded best friend. But of course he would lose the keys, I thought to myself. He fucking loses everything else all the time so what did I honestly expect, right?

And at that point, in my frustration, I wanted to blame everything on him. In fact, for a while, I did. I was in such a state of frustration that I told him to find the keys himself because I didn’t wanna deal with his mess at that point. Being in the same area as him was getting me even more upset about the key situation, so I got up and left my group camp to hang out with my friend Luke and his friends, who I had met on the second day (the group of friends I partied with until the sun came up that last day). I hung out with Luke all the way until he decided that it was time for them to finally try to get into that ridiculously long car line at around 1 PM. Then I made my way back to my group camp, bracing myself to deal with the situation once more.

When I got back to my group camp, most of our group camp members had already left and only a handful were left still packing things up. Hudson was nowhere to be found and no one had seen or heard from him in a couple of hours. His phone was dead, so there was no way to get a hold of him. It was at that point that I started going into panic mode and my anxiety took hold of me. I started thinking that I, by myself, would end up being the very last person in our camp, and probably the festival. I began to worry that maybe the way I reacted to Hudson losing the keys had been a bit too harsh and perhaps that set him off and he just decided to go off on his own to figure out a way home by himself, or some crazy shit like that. A thousand thoughts were rushing through my mind and I didn’t know what to do. I was a mix of various emotions by then, frustrated with the situation, worried about Hudson, worried about being left behind, etc. I tried to stay positive, but really I just wanted to plop right down in the middle of that field and cry.

Finally, right when I was about to go walk around the camp grounds to look for him, Hudson came back looking all distraught and flustered. So I went up to him and hugged him and I told him I was so happy to see him, that nobody knew where he was and I was starting to worry that maybe he was just so frustrated with how I reacted that he decided to find his own way home elsewhere. Then I apologized for the way I reacted and explained that I was just really tired and I wanted to go home and the news of the keys getting lost caught me off guard so I snapped at him. He began to cry because of how frustrated he was with the situation as well and I could tell that he was blaming himself completely for what was happening to us. So I hugged him tighter and reassured him that I don’t hate him, I’m not mad at him, and no one is blaming him for what happened because it literally could have happened to anyone.

At this point, he had already checked lost and found and our key wasn’t there, so we had no idea what to do. The last of our campmates suggested that we try calling the rental place to explain the situation and see what they recommend, so we used our friend’s phone to do just that. Hudson was on the phone with them for a while as he handled the situation from that point on. When he finally got off the phone with them, he said that they told him we would have to get the car towed to the nearest rental service station to get a replacement rental car. Thus begins the second chapter of our post-Forest misadventures getting home.

The towing company he spoke to said that they definitely would have room for all three of us (Hudson and I had picked up a stranger along the way to Forest because he needed a ride, so naturally we also had to make sure to get him home, too), and that they would send out a vehicle as soon as possible but they had no estimated time of arrival because of all the traffic in the area with thousands of people trying to get out of the festival. So we sat around for what seemed like an eternity, and finally, at around 6:15 PM, the tow truck came. At this point I had gotten severely sunburned (which I had managed to avoid entirely throughout the whole festival) and I was in a lot of pain because the sun was still high up in the sky bearing down on us. Upon seeing that there were three of us, the tow truck driver immediately said that he only has room for one person in his truck, and that nobody can be riding in the car while it’s getting towed.

So then Hudson and Cody (the guy we picked up) went running off across the campgrounds from car to car trying to see if anyone could give us a ride to the place our car was getting towed to, or at least just to the nearest gas station or some place we could wait until the new rental car situation was taken care of. After a while, Hudson came back and he told me that Cody had gone ahead making his way out of the festival and that he would go with the tow truck driver and I would have to walk to the nearest gas station and wait for him to come back with the new car.

At this point, I was so done with everything that I accepted my fate and begrudgingly started walking towards the exit. I had to walk probably a mile and a half to get to the Wesco, where I found Cody sitting inside waiting. We sat there for probably a good hour and a half or so before we finally heard back from Hudson. Unfortunately, that phone call did not bring us good news. Hudson said that the rental place was closed for the day and wouldn’t be open until 8 AM the next day, so we would have to just get a hotel and spend the night in Michigan. Here’s where the universe decided to throw in another plot twist.

I had no idea where he was, and I thought he was just somewhere nearby, but then he said that Cody and I would have to take a cab all the way out to Muskegon because that’s where the rental place was and that’s where he found us a hotel for the night. Apparently, there were no Ubers or Lyfts in Rothbury so we had to pay for a $65 cab ride to get to Muskegon, where Hudson said he would be waiting for us with the room booked and everything taken care of.

So Cody and I took a cab out to Muskegon to a Days Inn, and when we got there, Hudson was nowhere to be found and his phone was going straight to voicemail. At this point, I’m about to chuck my phone on the ground because I’m just so frustrated and done with everything. Just when I was finally about to give up all hope, Hudson came walking up to the hotel and said he hadn’t booked the room yet so he went and did that right away. We finally got to the room and got situated for the night, but we hadn’t eaten anything substantial that day due to stressing out over our situation. We also didn’t really have any money left to spend since whatever money we did have left was going into taking care of all the additional unexpected expenses of our misadventures. So I had to call my mom and explain the situation to her and she ordered some pizzas for us to get us through the night. Things had finally calmed down, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the next chapter of our misadventures the next day.

So the next morning we woke up and got a ride to the rental place and they got us set up with a new (smaller) car, but they weren’t giving us the keys to it until we got the old car towed to an actual service center. So we unloaded the old car and put everything (or so I thought, but I’ll cover that later in the story) into the new car and called another towing company to take care of the old rental. Then we got back to the hotel and woke Cody up so that we could get going, and then as we’re leaving Hudson told me that I would have to drop him off at the airport because he had to fly home or he would miss work and end up losing his job on top of everything that had already happened to us.

I laughed a “You’re fucking shitting me right” laugh and told him there was no way it would work because there was literally no room in the car for all three of us to fit. Hudson insisted that he would make it work because there literally was no other option for us. So he pushed some stuff around in the back to make room for himself and he crammed his body into the tiny little cubbyhole he had made and ended up having to lay flat across all our stuff for the duration of the ride to the airport. Which, by the way, was NOT the airport closest to our hotel room...I thought it was, which is why I was thinking the whole time, “why can’t I just drop Hudson off first and then just come back to pick up Cody and make our way westward from there?” But apparently Hudson needed to get a flight out of Gerald R. Ford International Airport, which was about AN HOUR AWAY from where we were at, and an hour out of the way from where we were trying to get.

So there I was on that drive to the airport, fighting back tears because I was having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that I would end up having to make the 27ish hour drive home to Salt Lake City BY MYSELF. We finally got to the airport and the only redeeming thing out of that whole ordeal was getting to watch Hudson exit the vehicle by popping out of his little cubby hole and getting onto the curb barefoot looking like a hobo. But we bid farewell to each other and he apologized profusely about the situation and leaving me to drive back home on my own.

So then it was just Me and Cody and we finally made our way out of Michigan. I drove to Joliet, Illinois, where I dropped him off and after that I was on my own. I was originally planning to take a detour into Chicago and Great Lakes to visit some of my old haunts from back when I was stationed at Great Lakes, but by that point it was rush hour traffic and it would have added like 4 more hours to my trip, so I just said fuck it and kept on driving westward out of Illinois.

The drive home was very lonely and it took much, much longer than I expected it to because I ended up having to stop constantly due to fatigue and several times due to severe thunderstorms and high winds along the way. What should have been only a 27 hour journey home ended up taking me several days and I ended up not getting home until Friday morning. I completely missed the 4th of July festivities, which I was actually really looking forward to. But at least I made it home safely when I did. If you think this story of my misadventures is finally over, brace yourself because the worst part is yet to come.

When I finally got home and started unloading the car, I noticed that a bunch of stuff was missing and was nowhere to be found. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was all just my stuff or Hudson’s stuff that was missing, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. You see, a bunch of our friends in our group camp had entrusted us with stuff that they couldn’t fly home with, and we accepted that responsibility because we were the only ones driving who still had space to take on additional things. So there I was freaking out over all the missing things, and the only thing I could think of was that back at the car rental place when Hudson told me we were good to go, he somehow ended up leaving some things in the old rental or on the ground by it and in my frazzled state of mind at the time I didn’t even think to double or triple check to make sure we had everything.

So I had to do the hard thing and tell everyone in our group chat that we were missing a bunch of the things that they had entrusted us with, and that was when my personal hell started. A bunch of our friends then started messaging me personally asking about their stuff, to see if it was among the missing items. One friend in particular had left us with some gear that was worth like $500, and that was among the missing items. He said “I trusted you with that stuff” and that fucking destroyed me. I’m the kind of person that if I say I’m gonna do something then I’ll make sure it gets done, and it gets done completely and properly. So when I accepted responsibility over all those things I had every intention of bringing it all back home safely. So to have my friend say that to me absolutely crushed me because now I feel like I can’t even face him or like I feel that every time I’m hanging out with him now there’s gonna be that failure on my part hanging over my head, or it’s gonna be on the back of his mind all the time that he trusted me with his stuff and I failed him and it cost a lot of money.

Anyway, the final misadventure in this long series of unfortunate events was with getting the rental car back to the rental place after all that. Hudson was originally supposed to just go with me so that I would have a ride home after dropping the car off, but because it took me much longer than expected to finally get home, Hudson had already gone out of town on another trip that he had had planned forever ago, and all my friends who I reached out to for help were at work and couldn’t help me. I had no money left over from the insane trip, so I couldn’t even just take an Uber or Lyft from the rental place, and I was stressing out hardcore because the rental was already 4 days late and costing us more money that we didn’t have the longer it was not safely returned to the rental place.

I finally found some help when a friend offered to just order me an Uber after I drop the car off, so that’s what I did. However, after dropping the car off I found out that we had incurred about $800 worth of charges due to the rental being returned so late. So now, even though that whole saga is finally over and done with, I’m still having to deal with the aftermath of it all and we’re having to figure out how to come up with the money to pay those charges. Yes we have jobs but these are unexpected expenses that we currently don’t have the ability to take care of, so even after that nightmare of misadventures has ended, we’re still not done having to think about everything and we still have to figure out a solution to it all.

Well, I promised everyone the most insane story of our (really MY though since I had to make the trip home by myself essentially) crazy misadventures getting out of Electric Forest this year...I hope I did not disappoint. Electric Forest 2019 was the best time of my life and I made some amazing memories with amazing new friends and experienced so much magic over the weekend. But everything that happened after the festival ended and we were trying to get home...I hope I never have to go through any of that ever again. I hope that no one ever does. I wouldn’t wish that shit on my worst enemy. I feel like everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, one after another. It kinda felt like we were living out our very own Hangover movie, minus all the laughs. I guess the one bright side to my misadventures, though...is that all the shittiness that happened after the festival only makes the memories made during the festival and the people befriended all that much more special and unforgettable for me.

I also do have to thank my best friend Hudson, because despite everything that went down and things turning out out the way that they did with him leaving me to make the journey home by myself...I literally would not have made it home without him. He was the one on the phone with everyone who needed to be talked to about our situation, he was the one who left me with enough money for gas to make it home, and he was the one who talked me down from my stress crying fit in the car and assured me that he was there for me and he was supporting me and that I would get home safely. I love that kid to death and even though the situation was frustrating and at times my frustration was directed at him, my love for him hasn’t changed and is probably even stronger coming out of this whole ordeal. He is my best friend, and trials like this are what the best friendships are forged out of and reinforced with. Also, he is a GENIUS music producer and literally everything he comes up with is absolute FIRE, so check him out at https://soundcloud.com/cacophonicofficial :P

I didn’t write this story looking for sympathy or help or whatever, I just really wanted to get my story out there because I felt like it was a story worth telling. But if you found this story worthwhile all I ask is that you share it and get this nightmare of a story out there. And if you do feel so inclined to help us with these unexpected expenses that arose from this nightmare, I do have a PayPal that you can send donations to: https://paypal.me/KRodeo. Thank you for taking the time to read about my insane misadventures getting home from Electric Forest 2019.