If you’re looking for a place to watch The Great American Solar Eclipse 2024 and want to do it some place fun, then head to Bandera, Texas for the Zero Music Fest.
This is an event with 26 bands – Rehab, the Georgia Satellites, Lita Ford, the former lead singer of Boston, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band among them – over a five-day period that will, quite literally, be a rocking place to watch the eclipse. It starts on Thursday, April 4th and goes through Monday, April 8.
Bands play from 10 a.m.-midnight at Mansfield Park, an open area that will provide full views of the eclipse, which is Monday, April 8. It has with 70 water/electric RV sites, 250 self-contained RV sites, and 150 tent camping sites. If you want an RV spot you had better reserve it pronto.
Tickets are cheap, too, certainly by today’s standards, $65 for a single day and $95 for all five days.
Zero Music Fest combines to fun and, well, party, events, a multi0day music festival full of bands and a rare solar eclipse, which attract people from all over the globe to watch the sun completely disappear for a short amount of time. To add to the fun, there is a costume contest on April 8 with $250 going to the winner.
As Bandera is the official Cowboy Capital of the World, there will also be rodeo activities.
Food kiosks and bars will be plentiful. Campers may bring in their own food for consumption in designated areas. Merchandise vendors will also be on site.
Shuttles will be provided to and from the town of Bandera, so people can experience its special Western flair and go horseback riding or on covered wagon rides, do boot scootin’ at the 11th Street Cowboy Bar or Arky Blue’s, shopping at the Bandera General Store and down home Texas cooking everywhere (don’t miss the homemade pie case at the Old Spanish Trail a.k.a. O.S.T.)
The 2024 Great American Solar Eclipse will last for four minutes, five seconds and will occur right over the festival. Accordiing to NASA, “the total solar eclipse will begin over the South Pacific Ocean. Weather permitting, the first location in continental North America that will experience totality is Mexico’s Pacific coast at around 11:07 a.m. PDT.” It will enter the USA through Texas and continue across the Midwestern states before existing North America at Newfoundland, Canada.
Special glasses with solar filters called “solar glasses” are needed to view it; otherwise do not look directly into it.
Website, Music Lineup, Schedule & Tickets: Ground Zero MusicFest
Nearby, you can also watch the solar esclipse from a rooftop bar in Plano, Texas.