ACM 2016

If you've been following my blog for even a couple of days, you know how much I love country music. Every April is the Academny of Country Music Awards and aside from last year, they are always here in Las Vegas. 

I took the weekend off so I could attend the festival and I gotta say, while the performers were great, this is probably my last ACM fest. When it started a few years ago, it was at the Orleans and was smaller and definitely a lot more awesome despite the smaller more run down venue. This year it was held at the new Las Vegas Festival Grounds. While very nice, it meant much larger crowds, harder parking, higher prices, and just more mayhem than I can deal with at this point in my life. One of my favorite annual events has become a little too much of a circus for me to deal with and considering all the smaller ACM events around town, I think I would have had a way better time (and fewer sunburns) at any number of those events. 

That said, I did catch some awesome performances, including a few of my personal favorites.

Old Dominion at ACM Fest and the After Party.

It was really special getting to see Matt and the guys accept the ACM award for best new vocal group or duo. After seeing them the first time back in 2014 when they had an audience of about 40 and nobody knew who they were, it's just amazing to see how far they've come. Nobody deserved that award more than these guys.

Brett Eldredge always puts on a great show.

My fave- Sam Hunt... The only reason I stood in the sun towards the front of the crowd for about five hours that day. 

 

Dustin Lynch at the After Party. 

Zion Camping

So for Corey's birthday, we wanted to get out of town but we didn't want to spend a whole lot of cash. The year before, we had gotten a bunch of cheap camping gear that we had yet to use, so Corey grabbed a new tent (his had a hole in it), some chairs, and a pump for our air mattress so that we would be all set to hit the road. 

We both really enjoy camping and being outdoors and had been wanting to take a little camping trip to Zion for a while so the planning was pretty easy. We also figured this was a great test run of all our equipment since we had yet to use any of it.

The drive to Zion is always pretty easy and not very congested. I had gotten super lucky and snagged a last minute booking at the Watchman Campground right inside the park. The other campground is first come first serve and that concept alone always induces a ton of stress for me. We had a beautiful HUGE site with a ton of space for our really big tent. The only downside was that it had rained pretty heavily the day before so getting the tent stakes to hold was a bit of a pain. 

The weather that day was absolutely perfect and we had a couple of nice (slightly undercooked) meals by the fire. Great way to celebrate my sweetie's birthday!