Well it was my first time to cornerstone this year. It took a good 14 hour drive to go from Denver, Colorado to good ‘ol Bushnell, Illinois. The trip went real fast and was pretty uneventful except for the fact that 50 miles away from Des Moines, Iowa my back rear tire decided to blow-up while going a clean 80 miles per hour. This of course could have put a good rain cloud on my journey, I mean, I was in the middle of a rather amazing Audio book, and like any other road tripper I had timed to the minute the exact time I would arrive. Oh well. I got a hotel that night in Des Moines and waited till morning to get a new tire.

After getting a new tire I was on my way and arrived at Cornerstone on Thursday, the 6th at about 4pm. To be honest, since it was my first time I had no clue what to expect. I had always imagined Cornerstone to be some sort of youth group party, ya know the kind with pizza and pop, youth pastors chasing around the rebellious one and all that. But to my shock it was a lot harder and more real than that. Most of the people seemed around my age. After about an exploring and wandering around trying to find out where each stage was and where the heck are people from Tastyfresh were, I thought that maybe they would be holding some sort of big banner at the gate with my name on it but alas this wasn’t the case.

I eventually tracked down Cindy and Chris at their smoothie bar and had a couple quick pleasant conversations. After that I just walked around and tried to sync up my vibe and attitude with that of the festival. My instant thought was that this is cool. A ton of people, music from tons of stages hitting your ears from any given time, and the overall attitude of the people there was accepting and friendly. I actually had just attended Electric Daisy Carnival in LA about 10 days before and got to experience the craziness of that. I remarked after my trip that honestly Electric Daisy Carnival was not as crazy as Cornerstone. I mean, 12 Official stages with who knows how many tens of other generator stages make the event non-stop action from 11:00am till 4am. Well at least, those were the hours I was sleeping, so there might have been more action in between the hours I was trying to sleep in a lopsided tent with no bottom padding and a thin blanket. Side note to anyone ever going to attend: Bring a nice sheet, big blanket and a freakin Blow-up mattress you can get for $10 at Wal-Mart. I will never make the same mistake twice.

I camped out about a whole 30 yards from the Dance Barn. A good choice in retrospect because of my neighbors: Club Worship (Jeff, you rock) and the Jeremy Kadinger crew (Jeremy and Heather, you rock, too). I had good company and a nice camp to hang out with and call my home for a couple days.

I loved meeting all the Tasty people. Every one of them looked different that I had imagined. It was so crazy because some of them I have been chatting back and forth with for like 4 years.

The Dance Barn was so class. My favorite thing was that they had everything a DJ needs standard. Like a nice pioneer 600, 2 Technics 1200, and some pioneer 1000 CDJS. I thought the whole Dance Barn area was properly decorated with white cloths and lights and visuals. The place looked great. The sound was nice and loud and had plenty of that good old-fashioned bass. One thing that surprised me though was just how out of the way it really was from the main flow of people. The people there you could tell just wanted to have fun, and were dancing around and having a good time with their friends.

In conclusion, I would love to make it back to Cornerstone, only next time for a lot longer, and a lot more prepared. Also I wanna bring my own golf cart because I got several pretty good blisters after walking so much. Lastly, go to Cornerstone if you’ve never been there… it’s a great time!