Noise, Crowds, Peace and Quiet and Family

We survived the 7 days of Common Ground and moved on to Country Thunder in Twin Lakes, WI.

Some of my favorite Common Ground people!

Common Ground Office Staff

Matt, one of the East Gate Managers

Gayle and Emily, East Gate Managers

Gayle is a teacher at the local college, teaching Event Planning.  Emily and Matt are two of her students who got VERY practical experience running the east entrance gate.   They were fun to work with and did a GREAT job!

Stevie Ray Bacon, Chachi, Buster and Boris manning the EMU
The names are a story for another time!

Common Ground's last day was Sunday with Sublime With Rome as the last act. 

Monday morning, we picked up the girls at the boarding place, hooked up the trailer, said goodbye to all our new festival friends and headed west to Twin Lakes, WI to get started on Country Thunder.  We drove through Chicago on our way...always a pleasure (not).  Bad roads, high tolls, lousy traffic.  At least it was a bright sunny day.

This is one of our favorite festivals because we get to see some of our favorite festival friends from Country Stampede.  Laurie, Butch and Joanne, Johnny B and then our new festival friends who also work the Country Thunder in Arizona.  Marty and Dick, who run traffic and parking are always a hoot!  Made some new friends..Joe, Mike and Connie with the gate services company. Sorry, no pictures with them...and not many pictures at all.  Guess I took too many last year! :)

Field of Port a Potties....View out our back window before the
all the campers arrived.

This is an additional stage on the grounds for something called "Electric Thunder".  VERY loud.  Our trailer was close enough that we could feel the thump thump of the music as movement.

After almost 3 weeks of noise and crowds we just wanted some peace and quiet.  We found a little, quite nice RV park in Sycamore, IL with a couple of ponds.  Monday we took the looonnnnggg drive of 53 miles to Sycamore, checked in, parked, set up and started the relaxing.  Aaaaahhhhh.....

We were pretty near Dave's sisters, Judy and Janet so they came to spend some time with us both days.  We really enjoyed their visit and have decided that this should be a post Country Thunder stop each year.

We left Sycamore on Thursday and headed for southern Illinois.  Since we have about a week before we meet the kids in Lake of the Ozarks we decided to find an RV park near Dave's sister Frankie.  We haven't seen her and her husband since her daughter Stacey got married 3 years ago.  To top it off Stacey and Eric gave Frankie and Dave their first grandchild this year and we were anxious to meet him.

Edward David Kreher

We always say that the Arnold's may not do much else well, but we sure make beautiful babies!!  Stacey and Eric are no exception.  He is one handsome guy!

Fridays for Frankie are Eddie day, so we arrived at the perfect time to spend the afternoon with him and Grandma.  Then she and Dave came out to visit us at the trailer on Saturday and we went over to Stacey and Eric's for dinner on Sunday.  We have taken the last two days to get things ship shape around here and will go over to say our goodbyes to the Yuill and Kreher clan tomorrow.  We sure have enjoyed spending time with them after so long.  We will probably have to make this an annual stop too!

Thursday morning we leave to meet ALL of our kids and grand kids for a long weekend at Lake of the Ozarks.  We are looking VERY forward to that.  Then a week at Kathy's and Tim's and then make our way north to Rockford for On the Waterfront at the end of the month.

So, now you are all caught up.  It seems that I have really gotten out of the habit of keeping my blog.  Need to change that.  Again.  I may or may not get anything blogged while we are enjoying our grand kids but will try to keep motivated to keep you informed.  Stayed tuned for pictures of our family vacation and other things.  I can see the thrill in your eyes already. :)

Day 5 at Common Ground

Here we are on day 5 of Common Ground on what promises to be the busiest night.  Eric Church is here tonight and they are expecting to be sold out.  For those of you in our festival family, sold out here means 12,000.
Here's a few pictures from the last few days.

Festival crowd Tuesday evening for Foghat and Joe Walsh

Taken from the bridge looking towards the backstage catering area.
You can see our 5er to the left in the background

Also taken from the bridge looking backstage at the artist bus and trailer area
towards the crowd

Since the venue is on the river boats congregate, for free.  

Looking across the river at downtown Lansing.  It's a beautiful area.

This is a new festival for us and we are pretty much enjoying it, but like all festivals sleep is lacking.  At least this festival doesn't start until 5:00 each evening, so we're getting just a little more than usual.

OK, fun over...here's something I received yesterday, along with a cookie, that really bothers me.

Why in the world would this bother me?  Because of what is on the reverse.

Click to make larger

Why is it that some people (quite a few actually) believe that if you don't believe in God and the Bible you are not a "good American" or patriotic?

I'm pretty sure the Preamble to the Constitution says "We The People", not "We the Christian People".

I guess serving in the Army, my father, brother and Uncles serving in the military, paying my taxes, exercising my right to vote, supporting other Americans in their rights and living by the laws of our Constitution don't count.

OK, off the box now.

And....Here we are.....

Parked on a city street in Lansing Michigan!  This is by far the least "it" campsite we have had to date.  Don't think I can even call it a campsite, really it's just a parking spot and in a bus zone at that!

But, it will still be an interesting spot. We are actually just on the other side of the backstage fence. We are in Lansing to work at the Common Ground Music Festival.  This is a long one for us, the longest being the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque.  This one is 7 days.  Each night has a different genre of music so should be interesting.  Click on the festival name to link to what it's all about.

We travelled two looonnnggg days to get here from Kansas.  Well, long for us.  About 400+ miles a day and after all that time closed up in 100+ heat it took the house quite awhile to cool off....yuck!

I started this post 4 hours ago.  At that time Kevin and Josh showed up with our credentials and a note from Jennifer (our contact here) that we would need to board the dogs.  She was even nice enough to do the research for us and the girls ended up at Lake Lansing Road Animal Clinic and Pet Resort. The staff are very nice and looks like they will be well taken care of for 10 days.  Not sure they will be talking to us when we pick them up, but they should be just fine.

I made a quick stop at Meier's grocery store and we headed out to lunch.  Now Dave is trying to get the Dish up and running...there's a race on tonight ya know.  I'm just hangin in the very cool house.  It's in the high 90's today but humidity is 58% and dew point is 71.  One hot mofo.  Cold front supposed to come in tonight and we will be back down in the 80's here and that will be quite a relief!

We at least have some trees here as we are on the edge of a city park.  Here's the view out our window by the door.

OK, I'm outta here for now....More later....I hope.  Sorry to be a stranger, I'll try to keep up this time!