Country Stampede

Every year Manhattan, Kansas prepares for its huge 4-day country concert on Tuttle Creek Lake. This years headliners were Rascal Flatts & Taylor Swift. When Trav and I moved into town it was all we heard about and it just so happened to be June 26-29.

Being that those two bands happen to be my favorite country bands, Trav secretly did all that he could to score us some Saturday tickets and coverage of his 5pm-midnight emergency work shift at the hospital.
The Thursday night before the concert,at dinner, Travis pulled out a card for me and surprised me with the tickets - I was so excited, my first Kansas concert! What a husband!
Tuttle Creek Lake is only a 10 minute drive from where we live, but with all of the traffic it took us an hour till we were parked (it was chaos). Taylor Swift played at 7:15pm and we arrived at 7:10pm, just in time to find a spot to lay down our blanket. The bummer about Kansas is that until about 9pm it is still sunny - so the entire concert I had to hold my hand up over my face to block the sun so that I could see her perform (but it was worth it-she was adorable!)
After Taylor we had about an hour till Rascal Flatts so we wondered around. Let's just say that people warned us about the Stampede, everyone calls it 'The Woodstock of Country Music,' we now can understand why. Everyone was drunk and falling all over the place, both males and females were half dressed, etc. It was nuts! Nothing compares to this event in Arizona (Kansans are much crazier, believe me).

Rascal was about to start so we decided to stand for their concert on the side of the stage. We were in a crowd of crazy college age kids. Bad idea #1. Once Rascal opened, a bunch of girls jumped up on the shoulders of the guys they were with. Everyone behind them went nuts, including us - due to the fact that they were blocking the stage and the screen. People started pulling the girls down, yanking their bathing suit tops off, cursing at them; they would do anything to get them down. I politely asked the girl in front of me to get down and her father of about 50 years old decided to chew me out and chest bump me out of his way... Travis had to grab me by my back pack to yank me out of a potentially dangerous situation. Boy was that man lucky I was a christian woman, every other girl there would have hit him right back.

All in all we had a wonderful time, and Rascal Flatts can really put on a fabulous show! We loved the concerts and we are really glad we got to experience the true Kansas country spirit!