Country Thunder

My dear hunny works 2 days a week in a truck for most of the day, with the radio jamming to whatever he can find to amuse himself.  This guy knows the words to every song {so much that I am VERY surprised when I know a song he doesn't!} and hears every advertisement.  So anyway, a few months back Clint got this crazy idea; he wanted to go on a weekend getaway to County Thunder.  I thought that sounded kinda fun so we got online to check prices on tickets, see who was performing and look at hotels.  Hoowee!  The more we looked into the whole thing, the more excited we got.  It's been years since either of us went to a concert, and neither of us had been to Country Thunder, so we were looking forward to a fun weekend away.

In April 'round here{yeah, this post is late in coming, sorry!}, it's usually pretty warm, and it actually HAD been warm for a month or so prior to our mini-vacay.  BUT, for some reason this weekend the thunder clouds rolled in and dropped the temp by about 40*!!  Luckily, I had brought a flannel and jeans as an afterthought or I would have frozen!  On our way out we had to stop by a Target to pick up shoes {my flip-flops weren't going to cut it unfortunately}, socks and an umbrella.  I found 2 pairs of shoes that I really liked: a fun pair of rain boots on clearance for $12, or a pair of Converse for $30.  Normally, the cheap Tiffany would have bought the rain boots, but I just knew that I was going to feel like an idiot walking around Country Thunder in RAIN BOOTS just because it was sprinkling outside.  SO, I nixed the boots and chose the Converse with the excuse that I've always wanted a pair and that I will honestly wear them more often.

See how pretty?  This is the before shot...

And here is the AFTER!

Holy moley, did I choose the wrong pair of shoes!!!

The road that was normally dirt leading out to the action had been turned into anywhere from a few inches to almost 2 feet of the stickiest, slimiest, squishiest, nastiest mud.

It may not look that bad, but keep in mind that we were only going 5 miles an hour and STILL kicking up that much mud from the tires!!

Oh, and not just the road but EVERYWHERE else too!  EVERYONE HAD ON RAIN BOOTS!  Ok, not everyone.  I actually saw another girl with Converses on, and when she saw how much mud were on her shoes she pouted, then I showed her mine and we took comfort in the fact that we were both idiots and wished we had rain boots.  :O)

Now let me preface this with a small clarification for those who have never been... Country Thunder is typically a big par-tay, but with all the frigidness, there were a lot more clothes this year!!  :O)  I'm probably pretty accurate when I say that I'm probably one of the few who preferred it that way.  LOL

When we trudged up, Rio Grand was onstage, followed by Neal McCoy.  We REALLY enjoyed Neal McCoy!  I barely knew any of his songs, but he was such a GREAT entertainer that it didn't matter!  He danced even though he knew he looked like a goober.  It was one of the funnest performances of the day.

Next up was the Bellamy Brothers, who {I'm sure back in the day were awesome, but...} were pretty boring.  Just our opinion!

There was an hour break between performers, and we took the time to walk around and see all the vendors.  They didn't let you pay cash for food, you had to buy tickets and then use the tickets to buy food.  Pretty smart, because we would never pay $6 for chicken nuggets, but when you have 30 tickets, 6 tickets isn't such a bad deal.  Sneaky eh? 

We saw Rodney Atkins next and he was AWESOME!  There was a huge mud pit that was full of happy, drunk people at this point who were pretty amusing to watch too.  We were pretty exhausted and frozen by the time he was finished but Little Big Town was up next and we were pretty stoked to see them.  They were incredible!  You can't get any better than their harmonies.  It was so fun to watch and listen to them perform "Boondocks" live, I didn't know who to watch!  SO FUN!

When they finished, our feet were SO cold and we were walking zombies and almost didn't stay for Martina McBride, but we realized we would SERIOUSLY regret it if we left early so we stayed until she started at 9 that night.  We didn't stay for her whole show, but I found out later that she had a special guest star {Jordin Sparks!}, and I {dang it!} wish we would have stayed.  Oh well, C'est la Vie right?!

It was a blast and although we came home dehydrated {who knew that you could get so dehydrated when it was pouring rain?}, we were glad we were able to take the time to get away for the weekend.  Don't we all need a mini-vacay now and then?  :O)