Country Thunder - Wisconsin

1. Kelly Pickler singing Red High Heels

2. Steve Holy on the jumbotron

3. LBT firing off the canon

4. Little Big Town

5. Neal McCoy

6. Memory by the fireplace

7. Matt's hair straight!!!

8. The crowd before those in VIP seating (the white seats) arrived

9. Jamie and Matt taking pictures for the fans

10. Me with Jason and Patrick from our affiliate radio station, US99, on my last day at CT

Jamie, Matt and I left Naperville on the morning of the 18th, picked up the trailer from the race track in Joliet and began our trek to Lake Geneva, WI. We arrived in Lake Geneva, moved our luggage to the rooms and headed out to dinner.

After dinner, we came back to Bella Vista Suites (where we stayed for the week) and asked the front desk attendant for a board game to play. The selection was limited. In fact, there were only games for kids, but we decided to play a few of those anyway. Jamie and I shared a room in Lake Geneva so Matt came next door to our suite to play...Memory! That's right...ages 3 to 6 and there we were playing a children's game and sipping on Mike's Hard Lemonade, which was given to us as we left the races in Joliet. Not only were we playing Memory and drinking fru-fru drinks, we played in front of the fireplace in our room, which we chose to turn on...in the middle of July! At least we set it to the flame setting and not the heat setting. After Memory, Jamie and I continued our series of children's games and played Chutes and Ladders. Matt didn't want to join us so he went next door and grabbed his guitar. Matt played us some tunes, while Jamie and I struggled progressing up the board in Chutes and Ladders. In fact, we quit playing because we couldn't get to the second half of the board and it was taking too long:-)

As we chilled in the suite we got the brilliant idea to straighten Matt's hair with a flat iron. Jamie began the straightening process and it was rather entertaining. Matt's beautiful curls soon vanished and he was left with stick straight, spikey hair. He really looked like a stranger...almost unrecognizable. We definitely got our laughs and had lots of fun styling his hair, but Matt has decided against wearing his hair straight!

The next day began our first day of work at Country Thunder in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. The crowd lined up early at the main entrance and rushed in with lawn chairs in the morning to reserve their spots in the lawn for the days' performances (just like at Country Concert in Ft. Loramie). We had a pretty good crowd, aside from the weather scare. But what would a Country Thunder be like without a little rain. It only rained for about an hour and then the show went on. Some of the performers of the day included, Kelly Pickler, Steve Holy, and Trace Adkins.

The next couple of days the weather was great! We had large crowds and the fans were really getting into karaoke. We even had a few army guys that literally ran over to our stage to sing when they heard we were opening up karaoke. They were also very entertaining as they played the air guitar and entertained the crowd. The radio station allowed us to talk on the air several times again...which is always fun. We were also located next to the army tent which had a large canon stationed out front. Every so often throughout the day, they would have a few artists come over and fire off the canon and boy was it ever loud!

Over the weekend we saw all kinds of awesome performers like: Luke Bryan, Little Big Town, Sarah Buxton, Carrie Underwood, Dierks Bentley and so many others.

The 21st was my last day out at Country Thunder as well as my last day of work for the week. I scheduled vacation for the following week so after work, we headed to Chicago for the evening and stayed in Jamie's former place because my train left from Union Station bright and early.