The first rule of survival, and not getting voted off the island, is keep things simple and dry.

The Zip Loc bags were not around in the days of Abraham, because they didn't have Cornerstone. USE ZIPPERS! You can put hotdogs or lunch meat or those cheap sausages in them and throw them in a cooler. When your ice melts, just dump water out and add more ice. Zip locked food keeps a million times better than anything else at the fest. I assure you.

Then buy some cheap lunch bucket foods and throw them in your trunk. When you wisely spend all your money buying HAPPY LITTLE DAY and ONE BAD PIG CD's, you can reach in your trunk and eat cold lunch bucket foods. They stay dry. Use disposable spoons and forks. There is no place to plug in your dishwasher and besides, your dishwasher will not fit into a zip lock bag, and it would get wet.

Potato Chips fit into gallon sized Zip locks. Marshmellows fit. Ants are not attracted to zip locks.

Zip Locks also work for soap and tooth brushes and socks and women's stuff (I don't pack women's stuff myself).

It will rain, and you will not avoid the wetness! Your pillow will be wet. Your sleeping bag will get wet. Your bottled water will get wet! Things in zip lock bags will float. Floating is good. Wet is not.

Take old blankets. Use them as pillows. Sit on them at the main stage. Use them as a coat when you walk back to your campsite and realize the temp dropped 15 degrees while you moshed to 6 pence at the main stage. And then when they get wet, you hang them on a tree or car or on your neighbor, and they will dry. you will lose old blankets, and you will not go home wondering if you lost anything, cause you know you did.

My main gig, pack light. Set up camp site, then drive car into town and buy stuff like bottled water and zip locks and ice, and bring car back to parking lot by the gates to leave it there! The fewer cars in the camp ground the better. Cars in the camp ground get wrecked a lot anyway.

Pack few clothes. They will all get wet anyway. Many people think they are packing all these nice clean clothes and find that they wear the same shirt 3 days in a row. It's OK, we all stink, besides, your clothes get rained on, so that counts as a shower and a laundry wash all at the same time!

Final tip... go see Happy Little Day and One Bad Pig on July 4th... (I'm with their label, so I thought I'd throw that in there.)