Saturday, July 21st 2007
Day off in Chicago!

We woke up camping out in a truck plaza outside of Chicago. Jeremy, our driver had driven us in pretty close, but we didn’t want to go any further until we were sure we could park in downtown Chicago. We were planning on going the “Field Museum” today. After some coffee and some egg Mc muffins, we made our way closer into downtown Chicago.
We got to have special visitors passes to the museum thanks to a close friend of ours Ron Onesti. Thank you so much, Ron!
We found parking without a hitch, and we were immediately on our way to the museum to go see as much as we could see before it closed at 5pm.
We got to see all kinds of Native American exhibits, animal exhibits and the most intact, well-preserved tyrannosaurus rex in the world ever found (her name is ‘Sue’).
They had an exhibit about life on Earth starting from the “Precambrian” period (45 billion-543 million years ago) with prokaryotes and bacteria to present day earth and all of the life that had come and gone through various stages of global extinction. It also showed how the continents had shifted and moved. We had just enough time after that to see ancient Egypt and visit the gift shops.
We were not finished with Chicago yet. We were ready to go find some food somewhere with a cool atmosphere. Thanks to Eric’s web surfing, we stumbled across a place called “Al Capone’s Hideaway and Steakhouse.” It was literally Al Capone’s hideaway back in the 20’s, and because of that, boy we had quite a trip getting there! This place was out in the sticks, which brings me to share a little bit of history behind this place.
No one ever knew that Al Capone’s hideaway was off the beating path or even close to it. But for 75 years, the hidden spot along the east bank of the Fox River in an unincorporated area north of St. Charles had been a popular restaurant and watering hole. The characters who’d visited here and the activities that occurred here back in the 20’s are what makes this place so unique. There were many wild and daring times here, and the owners acutally manufactured their own liquor here during prohibition times and played host to many shadowy figures such as Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran. “Bathtub gin” was made here (and then mixed with beer) and when a raid ensued, they would pump the beer through cold copper lines into the henhouse. The crazy thing is that this underground system had not been discovered until the 60’s, when a renovation took place!
A lot of speak-easies and roadhouses had this system back in those days. They had done a really good job with preserving this house, and keeping “the vibe.” There were a lot of original pictures hanging on the walls of gangsters who frequented there. The place had two levels (that we knew of): the downstairs being a full bar and the upstairs being a dining area. The front door to the dining area still had a small slit of an opening for back in the day when they used to demand a “password” before allowing entrance.
They had several violin cases hanging about the place that featured Tommy guns inside of them!
They also had a strolling Dixieland group, and we found out that they’d be coming upstairs to the dining area to play.
After ordering some drinks downstairs, we went back upstairs and got our table. The place was busy and buzzing with activity.
Once again, that cool feeling hit me as we sat there waiting to order. How lucky we are to be here hanging out, being on the road and getting to experience these cool things! We toasted to that and not long after dinner was on its way.
Dinner was really good, and the band of guys had come upstairs to play for the dinner crowd.
I noticed that as we “relaxed” and hung out, that we started to drum more and more on the table along with the guys playing. At first, we weren’t really sure how they were taking this enthusiastic activity from us, we’re musicians and you can only sit so long before you have to start taking part in the musical flow of a situation when given. I’m sure that we were one of the more rowdy crowds that they’d had (except for back in the 20’s). We were calling off requests from “Sweet Georgia Brown” to “It Don’t Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing.” And they would play our requests! As the night went on and the spirits flew, we ended up jamming with them! It started with Becky jumping up on an old upright piano they had and hammering along with them on the tunes. I wasn’t far behind as the floodgates had opened and Eric was off to get my fiddle. It turned into one heck of a jam! We had a blast with these guys and they were so sweet to allow us to sit in and play. The owner of the restaurant gave us a huge Tommy gun bottle of their Vodka and some stogies. We also picked up some hats, shirts and mugs on the way out. Thank you “Al Capone’s Steakhouse and Hideaway” for having us! We strongly suggest to anyone who visits Chicago, if they’re in the mood for a visit to the days of the Mob and for some great food and entertainment, to go see and hang at this place! You will not be disappointed.

Friday, July 20th 2007 Gaylord, MI
Fun at“Alpenfest”
We left Kalamazoo at 9:30am and most of us went back to sleep on the bus. It was a beautiful day and it sounded like the gig was going to be a lot of fun as well. We pulled in about four hours later and the town of Gaylord was jumping with festival activity. The buildings and houses looking like you just stepped into Switzerland. I couldn’t resist getting off the bus and taking a stroll through all of the excitement. You could hear polka bands, smell that sweet smell of roasting almonds, and in the town square they were holding a pie-eating contest. There were quite a few cool shops up and down the street and I did end up going into one of them and getting a neat little stage hoodie to wear for the eve. I came unprepared for the temperatures that we were going to have to be playing in, (mind you, we’ve been spending the past few weeks of tour in 100 plus temperatures, so not once in our minds did we realize that we would be playing in 50 degree weather!) so I managed to find this neat little hoodie and long sleeved shirt half off the price!
Soon after, we did our sound check and we were a little bit concerned about the sound gear. Apparently, they’d had a huge storm blow through the night before and some of it had gotten wet. So it was pretty wild trying to get it going, because it seemed like every time we’d get a mix set, it would change. However, by show time, after leaving the gear on for a while, it dried out and settled in with us just fine for our mixes. We did two shows, each 45 minutes. We had a great time and there were a lot of cute little kids at the front of the stage dancing. We got to hang out with the Alpenfest queen’s court and also with some of our Navy guys. They gave us some cool Navy swag too!
We left Gaylord around 1am. We have a day off in Chicago tomorrow!

Thursday, July 19th
“A Taste Of Kalamazoo” festival!

We left Wednesday at midnight for Kalamazoo, MI. We all slept pretty well all the way there. I was the first to wake up, so I put on some good bus coffee and was on my way with a mug full for a walk around downtown Kalamazoo. It seemed that we were plenty early and that there wasn’t any rush to be anywhere. So I headed towards the mall area of the town. There was a lot of cool architecture, and I noticed as I walked up the street how people seemed to greet me as they passed. How neat! There were some really cool stores and gift shops. There were also some really neat coffee shops and martini places. It just seemed like a happening area of town. I ducked into a few of the shops and browsed a little while.

For lunch, we literally got to partake in the different tastes of Kalamazoo. We got to order from various local restaurants and they rocked! We got everything from chicken curry, meatball subs to sushi brought on the bus for lunch.

Everyone at the venue was so sweet to us and treated us so well. They even shuttled us to and from the hotel in a white limo. We did a cool radio interview and later on our show! Other than a few technical difficulties on stage, the show went over really well and our audience was extremely supportive! We got to hang out with our radio friends at WIN 98.9 for a while. Thanks for having us Kalamazoo!

Saturday, July 14th gig in Grundy, VA. Opening for Trent Tomlinson

Hi there! We left Nashville last night around midnight. It’s so nice to be back on the bus again after such a busy week.
Today we’re in Grundy, VA. We awoke to surrounding hills and the bus parked in a small valley in the town. It made me miss my West Virginia hills! We had a few rooms at the comfort inn, and the interesting thing about this hotel was that they had the cutest little rubber duckies sitting on the bathtubs of the rooms.
What an interestingly cute thing to wake up and arrive to. This was extremely adorable compared to some of the other places that we’ve found ourselves staying at (places with bullet holes in the windows, huge menacing bugs, over all creepiness etc….)

Sometimes, while out on the road, (and it may be due to boredom), but being cooped up on a 45 foot bus rolling down the road, fatigue that plays with your head, leading to extreme slap happiness or just for the hell of it, you do things for basic entertainment at the expense of someone else, just to get a rise out of them.
Trenna and I were the first to get back on the bus after cleaning up for the gig. We tend to be the two that cause the most ruckus and practical jokes on the road. She came up to me giggling with that devious grin on her face hiding something behind her back to surprise me with. I wasn’t sure what to expect! She had went to the store and bought of all things: a whoopee cushion! The feeling of deviousness and sheer joy came over me and we immediately realized that we had to plant it somewhere before everyone else came on board! Quickly, we scrambled around the front lounge of the bus trying to think of a perfect most “effective” place to hide it. We placed it under one of the seat cushions (which was a little bit hard because they’re attached to wood) and waited. The first place we put it is where Eric, our road manager, tends to sit a lot and wouldn’t you know it, he was the first one to come on board. We sat down out of the way of the planted prank and patiently waited for Eric to sit down in his usual spot. Trenna started suggesting to Eric to “Take a seat,” “Stay a while,” “Take a load off,” etc. The anticipation was killing us! In the middle of his usual rundown of the day, he did take a seat, however instead of getting the huge sound of sick flatulence that we’d so longed, hoped and prepared for, instead we received a little “Poot,” that was barely heard and totally unnoticed. We frowned as we were unsuccessful in our venture for entertainment, but that didn’t stop us there! If anything, it drove us even more to get that perfect whoopee cushion performance, and someone’s hind end was going to make it happen!
As everyone else started coming on board the bus, we desperately tried to secretly hide it in a more “strategic spot”.
One strategic spot was on an area of the couch right next to me. Our next victim was Debbie. She lugged her suitcase on board and came up to the front. Once again, Trenna having a harder time keeping a straight face, urged Debbie to “Take a seat,” “Make yourself comfortable.” Debbie did, right where we’d placed the cushion and still……. no luck!! The bus was starting to roll, and still we secretly tried to stash it somewhere! We tried it on Debbie several times, -I was getting more entertainment out of Trenna’s reactions to the failure of the whoopee cushion and her various ways to distract Debbie so I could replant it, than the actual cushion itself! Our laughter gave us up and the lot was uncovered. The whoopee cushion met its fate less than an hour later when Trenna sat on it on top of the bus table, blowing a hole in it. It sounded like a car backfiring! The end result; a very flat and dead whoopee cushion. Ha, ha I’m laughing with tears in my eyes right now.

We took the bus up to the venue. The roads were really windy and narrow. They were so windy and narrow, that a small pickup truck from the fire dept. had to take the lead and as we made our way up and around the hills, and had to urge on coming cars to pull over to allow room for us to maneuver the bus. It was very pretty though, and once again I missed home.

When we got there, we walked around the fair. We got to go through a funhouse, go down a huge slide, and go into a haunted house. We then got to have some really good catering!

We did our show and had a great time and Trent Tomlinson rocked the house. We’re now heading back to the hotel for showers and will meet back with the bus and get some sleep. We’ll get back to Nashville in the morning!

Friday, July 13th 2007
Howdy everyone! It’s hard to believe that we’ve already gotten home and the week has flown by! We’ll be leaving out again this evening for Grundy, Va. Our last trip out was a little bit grueling, but it was also extremely pretty with all of the beautiful sights of Utah and Colorado.
I managed to keep “bloggage” notes on my phone as we traveled to capture moments, sights, ect. So here we go!

Wednesday, July 4th 2007
“4th of July in Ashland, KY!”

All I can say is that Ashland, KY. Really knows how to celebrate 4th of July and their fireworks were unbelievable!
This gig was extra special to us because we actually got to take some of our loved ones out on the road with us for the trip. So early that morning, we all met the bus at Trenna’s and made the 5 hour trip to Ashland, KY. It was so much fun having hubby’s and family on board with us. It isn’t very often that we get to do so, but when we do it’s so nice! Because so many times we’ll be out on the road and see something totally amazing and wish that our significant others, or kids could see it and share the moment. So it was really special to have our family out with us to share the 4th of July with.
We arrived at the venue and was working on getting soundcheck together when a huge storm started to roll in. We got in a little bit of a line check, until the wind started blowing furiously and causing the sound crew, electricians and us to scatter and take shelter. The immediately had to cover up all of the gear of both ours and Diamond Rio’s along with all of the speakers, soundboards ect. The rained poured and poured. No end in sight! We did still manage to do our radio interview with Scott of WKTC! It rained so much that there were 5 inches of standing water outside our bus door! You had to take a major leap to get off, and even then you still got your feet wet. The weather did clear and other than fool with our pre show meet and greet and take about 10 minutes off of our show, things ran smoothly. There was some drizzle off and on, but that didn’t stop us or our dedicated country music fans!
The fireworks happened shortly after and what a show they were! Diamond Rio took the stage afterwards and did a stellar show. Afterwards we got to hang out with lead singer Marty Row for a while.
We were then off to the hotel to get our showers and left Ashland around 2am.

Thursday, July 5th 2007 Travel Day

We rolled back into Nashville around 6:30am and we had to drop our loved ones and gear off back at the meeting point, Trenna’s house. We then had the bus take us out to the Nashville Airport to get ready to fly out to Salt Lake City, Utah. We did manage to get some breakfast at Cracker Barrel before hitting the airport. My fun moment came when we’d gotten off the bus to go into the airport and I’d realized that I’d left my cell phone plugged in on the bus in the lounge! My heart skipped a beat and panic struck me! I dropped everything I had in front of Eric’s feet and raced back down the escalator and back out the front doors of the airport. The bus was no longer out front where it had dropped us off! I then looked to my right and there it was, sitting at a red light just turning green about 50 yards away from me!
Now I’m quite the “gym visitor” , I go religiously every morning (except weekends and even then I’ll walk or run or something), but it immediately hit me that I’d been training seriously for this very moment that had awaited me! So I took off full tilt in pursuit of the bus. I figured that it would at least have to shift 4 to 5 times before it could get up some real speed from the light and leave me in the dust defeated. I ran like the wind and waved my hands furiously like a coach in a bad play call in a football game! Thank God the bus driver took a glance out his side mirror and spotted me! Jumping back on the bus I told him “I’ve been training 6 months for that.” He smiled, I grabbed my phone and “walked” back into the airport, hoping no one knew who I was.
We went about our way to Salt Lake City, Utah!

Friday, July 6th Layton, Utah
“Hot, hot, HOT!!!
We were in Layton, Utah and it was burning up! The West has been suffering major drought with no relief in sight.
Our day started off with some phone interviews and some down time. I took some time to go walk around a little bit and get some sushi for lunch. The temperature reached 110 degrees with little or no humidity.
We went and did sound check around 3pm and I could tell that the heat zapped my energy a little. Sound check went on for a little while longer than usual due to some gear problems, but we all pulled through. We went back to the hotel to get ready and cool off. I actually ended up snoozing for about 30 minutes.
On the way to our show, I saw a bank thermometer that read 104 degrees. This was at 7:30pm, 30 minutes prior to our outdoor show! We drank a lot of water and the eager crowd kept us charged up! We had the honor to meet Art Cameron, Brigadier General, USAF Commander of the 309th Maintenance wing of Hill AFB Utah! Thoughout our stay in Layton, I had the joy of watching F-16 fighters fly maneuvers over the city. I’ve always had a fascination for fighter jets and flying and I have always wanted to go up in one. Even before flying on the fiddle, I’d dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot. So needless to say, along with the other girls knowing this, we had to try to hit him up for a ride for moi! He couldn’t make it happen on this run, but said that perhaps next time if we come out and do a show for the base. Hook us up, secret agent man! Ha!
We also got to meet the mayor, Steve Curtis. Thank you all for having us and taking such great care of us out there! Thanks for driving us, Alice!

Saturday, July 7th
Travel to Meeker, CO. Show with Aaron Tippin

Today we loaded up the 15 passenger van with our coffee, gear and ourselves and headed out to Meeker, CO. to do a show with Aaron Tippin.
We traveled through the huge mountain passes, what a beautiful countryside and even though the temperature was soaring once again down in the valley, you could still see some snow on the mountaintops. It doesn’t seem like it’s that far up, but the snow proved differently.
We would love to come back to this area for a vacation (Skiing, snowboarding, glider rides ect.)!
Debbie got a kick out of all of the miles and miles of white fences and horses. There were a lot of gorgeous mountain homes with huge windows that supplied the owners with a panoramic view of the beauty around them.
We passed through many cute mountain towns, but also passed through many areas of huge stretches of land in which whomever lived there would’ve had to have been pretty self sufficient in order to survive.
We got into Meeker, CO. at 4pm. We dropped our gear off and had to run right to the venue for sound check. We ate some really nice home cooked food prior.
We had started doing our sound check when a lot of dark monsterous clouds started rolling in along with lighting. We immediately had to pull the plug, and that was a bummer because we were having issues with Becky’s backline keyboard. We had to run back to the hotel, change and come back for the show. It didn’t seem to rain much (bummer, since that area could really use it) and in spite of the rolling clouds and potential threats, the show went on. Once again, the crowd hung tough with us! Thanks!
Aaron Tippin went on not long afterwards and we got to watch his show. We were particularly intriqued by his performance of “Working Man’s PHD.” As the band started the song, he brought on stage a small work table, and a BMX bike in a box needing assembly. The man managed, while singing the song, to put together the whole bike within 3 minutes (by the end of the song)! We were stoked!
WE visited with Aaron for a short while, but had to be on our way shortly afterwards. We had an extremely long travel day back (7 hr van ride and then 7 hrs. of plane flights) and were exhausted.
We want to say thanks to Mc Kenzie of KEKB for having us, and a very special thanks to Janet Marcus with “Denver Snowy Western Wear” for all of the beautiful shirts and for the wonderful “Bling!” Your continued support means so much to us. We’ll being wearing that stuff a lot!

Sunday, July 8th
“Heading Home!”

We were off to the races early the next morning, with a lot of coffee and our comfy clothes, ready to spend the day traveling back. I will say that I was really tired and part of me really wanted to sleep the entire 7 hour van ride back. But the beautiful, breath taking sights kept me awake the whole time! I could easily wake up out here every morning with a hot cup of coffee and a camera to take pictures of the endless, exquisite scenery. I found myself trying to snap wonderous rolling mountains and landscapes with my ditsy little camera phone! D’oh! Debbie went on about owning horses, Kim was plugged into her computer listening to music, Eric drove like hell, Becky scanned the radio for signal and Trenna slept.
Another trip wrapping up and another book full of memories! Catch you again soon!