almost woodstock...

You may or may not know that my favorite band is STAIND. I adore them. Have considered running away and marrying them. The whole band. Not just the hot-n-angsty lead singer. No. The entire band. It's not polygamy if you think of the band as a singular entity...

Anyway, one of the items on my 40 Things to do at 40 list (y'all do know I'm 40 right?) is to see STAIND in concert.

That concert was this weekend. They came to MudEdgefest along with Hurt, Drowning Pool, Chevelle, and Slipknot.

It has rained here in central Arkansas for damn near 2 solid weeks, so we are pretty much floating away. This concert was outdoors. And it thunderstormed and poured rained most of Saturday.

I did not care. I was NOT going to miss my most favoritest band ever on earth. Rain be damned.

So I put on my high-waters, my duck-boots and wore my cutest smile and we set off for MudEdgefest.
See how cute my smile is? Srsly, I was workin' the cute Saturday night.
The traffic was horrendous. I was getting texts from my friend Griff who had been stuck in traffic for more than two hours. He was getting ready to give up. But I was determined to get to the concert. I didn't care if they concert coordinators didn't have a good contingency plan for 40 days of rain. I would swim through the swamp if I had to. I was going to see my future husbands favorite band live.

We decided to bypass the traffic and go down to the next exit to see if we could come in the back way. We found a place to park and set out on the hike to the cow pasture.
It was a huge procession. But it wasn't raining anymore and the temp was perfect, so we made the most of it.

After about a mile and a half, the procession came to a halt. The road was completely flooded out.

Knee deep in some places

I was undeterred. Yes it was swamp water. Yes it was disgusting. Yes I was slightly afraid a water moccasin would come and take me away.

But I didn't care. I wanted to see STAIND!

So we trudged forward. And not long after the swamp we arrived at the farm. And this is where the fun began.

There was mud:

And even more mud:

and even some mud 'rasslin:

and the obligatory concert mullet:

And then there was STAIND:


Totally worth the drama of getting there. So glad I went. The adventure was fabulous. Plus, I was rocking the cute-n-muddy look. As was my oldest son...

Have you ever wanted to do something so badly that you endured extreme circumstances to achieve your goal?