MANCHESTER, Tenn. (WEST) -- The annual Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester is off to a soggy start this year.
Now in its twelfth season, the festival has been around long enough that, rain or shine, attendees have developed their own set of festival traditions.
Whether it’s eating Spicy Pie pizza or riding the colorful Ferris Wheel into the night sky, Bonnaroovians are creatures of habit.
Ten year festival goer Max Kelly starts her Bonnaroo routine in Murfreesboro, just before she arrives in Manchester.
“We are from Nashville,” she said, “so every year we meet up at Steak and Shake before we roll out here.”
Most festival traditions, however, begin at the entrance gates as fans sit in line waiting for camping spaces. For Patrick Friend out of Atlanta, Georgia, this means cooking breakfast as soon as he parks his car in the wee hours of Thursday morning.
"Bacon, lots of bacon,” he says, rattling off his traditional Bonnaroo breakfast menu. “When you get here, you get here really early in the morning, and we drive and get here at 11, by the time we are done setting up, what sounds better than some delicious bacon?”
Warren County resident Drew Davidson has decided to change one of his Bonnaroo traditions. In year’s past he slept in the bed of his truck, but kept getting rained on.
“We always try to come up with a better way to sleep,” he says. “Last year we got a tent and this year we gotta van.”
The van will no doubt keep him dry, but likely won’t help at all with this year’s mud.