Coachella 2014: Plenty of creature comforts at campgrounds

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival continues to find new and incredibly pricey ways to turn the weekend into a mini luxury vacation. Plenty of attention has been paid to the 5-star VIP experience, but what about the campgrounds?

Outside the festival gates, the campgrounds reveal a much different world. It’s from there that campers and general admission passholders make the lengthy trek to the festival events in the unforgiving heat.

Main Street, the major artery of this makeshift city, is dotted with faux houses. This year’s installations include a lighthouse, a colorful gingerbread house, a log cabin, a shiny rocket (which guests can climb into for cute pictures), a tepee and a dwelling fashioned out of oversized Popsicle sticks.

FULL COVERAGE: Coachella 2014

But it is the small comforts that matter, and there are plenty of those to make “roughing it” a lot more fabulous than a tent and a stocked cooler.

A general store has plenty of essentials (socks, clothing, packaged snacks, etc.), but guests with more specific tastes can shop elsewhere.

There is a farmers market stocked with organic produce and coffee, baked goods and super-niche products such as freshly made Bloody Mary mix and kombucha. And keeping in line with the more upscale dining that has popped up at the festival this year, particularly in the VIP areas, the campgrounds feature classier stands, including Short Order, Clover Juice Bar and Stumptown Coffee.

As for retail therapy? A line formed early one afternoon at To Die For Clothing, where a worker was screen-printing T-shirts. There was also Stuck On Vintage, which offered trendy threads such as frayed denim shorts, printed tops, boots, sun dresses, plaid tops, military jackets and a surplus of floral headbands.

COACHELLA 2014: Tell us your Weekend 2 schedule

Further pushing the bounds of creature comfort -- there were two women offering next day laundry service at $1.50 a pound, and one guy who was getting a rub down by a masseuse (which ran him $1 per a minute).

But if he really wanted a good stretch, he could have joined the handful of revelers finding their center during an early afternoon yoga class. Pilates is offered, too.

Camping can be the pits -- but not at Coachella.