The Far-Out Festivals Worth The Badge in 2025
Mountainfilm | Ben Eng
For Wildsam's inaugural Road Trip Awards we asked a panel of seven expert judges for the places that will make your next voyage through America unforgettable. Here, we're taking a look at Fly Festivals, places with national talent, singular focus and a cool locale. Bonus points for deep lore, creative concepts and raging afterparties.
Mountainfilm
In 1979, mountaineering films screened for three June nights at Telluride’s Opera House. Lito Tejada-Flores and Bill Kees originated the celebration, modest but with high ambition. That first year, Tejada-Flores told the local radio station: “You can have a documentary film of a difficult or daring exploit, or you can have a very beautiful film… it’s very rare when you have both in the same film, and those are the films I’d like to talk about.” Telluride was just emerging as a cultural hub. Decades on, Mountainfilm is a Memorial Day fixture among film lovers and conservation thinkers.
Hudson Valley Garlic Festival
We love a local food fest—especially niche, ag-centric and “a little nerdy,” as our judge Rachael Petach lovingly says: “The primary objectives are to get garlic and eat garlic. Things I’m thoroughly behind.”
Big Ears Music Festival
Roots journal No Depression calls this not so much a music fest as a “beautiful roadside stop on a spiritual journey.” We’re in.
Newport Folk Festival
The wholesome, folding-chair gathering reenacted for A Complete Unknown has us hankering to be there, singing along. Great line-up shaping up for July.
Festival of the Dark Arts
Oregon Coast winters get heavy. This port town fights back with a February coven of stout makers: 80-plus potent beers in the stormiest of brewing fests.
fortgeorgebrewery.com/festival-of-dark-arts
Key West Literary Seminar
Follow Tennessee Williams, Hemingway and Elizabeth Bishop to the end of the road, where sea breezes rustle palms and feral roosters strut by open-air talks by modern-day greats.
U.S. Pond Hockey Championships
With a biting chill in the air and the hiss of skates on a frozen lake, this is hockey as it should be.
Kentuck Festival of the Arts
A half-century old folk art meet-up draws 20,000 onlookers and more than 270 artists. With demos, spoken word and live music, the spirit endures.
MISSION CREEK FESTIVAL
Every spring, The Mission Creek Festival stages line-up of both cutting-edge bands and great writers. Andre Perry, Mission Creek’s artistic director, talks it over: “Mission Creek is about independent music and literature, and in a deeper sense about independent creative spirit. That can mean we showcase folks who have been around for awhile, or it can mean we showcase talent that’s just bubbling up. This April’s line-up has Rachel Kushner and Kim Gordon—names people know if they follow American writing,art and music. And then we have Mabe Fratti, who will be new to a lot of people.”
The Road Trips Awards
We scoured the map. We asked our smartest, most well-traveled friends. The results are in.
