Burning Flipside is the Texas version of Burning Man. It’s considerably smaller with about 2,400 people attending versus 60,000 to 70,000 for the annual main Burning Man held in the Nevada desert. Sara and I have tried to get tickets before but none were available; this year however we were successful! We thought it would be a good opportunity to find out what Flipside was like and equally important take our RV on a test run to see if everything worked.
We thought preparing for this event would be significantly easier since the location is only three to four hours away, versus the three days we need to get to the Nevada desert. This event started on Thursday April 24th and ended on Sunday 27th, whereas the big Burning Man event is a full week. All of these Burning Man events require you to bring your own shelter, food, water and of course all your costumes. Turns out we still had a ton of work preparing all the provisions and the all important “Shade Structure”. No one would dare going to Burning Man without adequate shade structure!
Finally Thursday afternoon on April 24th we had the RV completely loaded
and launched for Apache Pastures which is northeast of Austin. We left in a
significant rainstorm that added two hours to our journey down to the event.
We ended up arriving in the dark to a very wet muddy location. We checked in
and after driving around trying to find a place to park the RV without getting
it stuck in the mud we finally settled on a decent spot. After setting up our shade
structure in the dark we decided that was enough activity for one day and staggered into
the back of the RV and went to sleep.
Friday was a day we spent getting to know where everything was and figuring out how to get around. This event was very different to the main Burning Man because the location was all grasslands and trees with a few dirt roads to get around on. At the big event in Nevada the location is a huge flat desert playa where you can get on your bike and go anywhere any time of the day or night. The roads at Flipside were pretty narrow so using our bikes was more difficult and not a good idea at night. Turns out there were a lot of people driving golf carts around the event and you could flag them down for a ride. At first we were not super excited about the event I think because we were so used to the enormity of the Nevada event. As we started to realize getting rides was fairly easy we became more comfortable and we started to find some theme camps that we enjoyed.
Sunday was our last day and we were starting to get a good feel for living in the RV and how everything worked. We realized that thirty gallons of fresh water doesn’t go a long way. We never could get the hot water heater to work which was not a big deal and the air conditioner stopped working that day. When we got back home a quick call to the Leisure Travel Van customer service provided the easy tips to resolve all these issues. There is a lot to learn with an RV. The pro tip is don't leave cans of chocolate milk in wire pantry rack - they can get pierced and spray milk all over the place!
We stayed up late, danced a little, and were honored with the remote that lit the fire at the top of the tent. We visited a number of different camps including one that showed old time movies. All in all, we ended up having a great time and were glad we gave Burning Flipside a go. Monday morning we packed up and had a leisurely drive back to Dallas.
