with the light of the glittering stars...

Two years ago, my mother won tickets to the "Symphony on the Flint Hills." She took my dad and has been raving about it ever since. I did a little research and found that tickets are not easy to get. They are ususally sold out within a few hours - this year the window opened at 8am, and I'm pretty positive the tickets didn't last until noon. Thanks to the beauty of technology, we bought our tickets via Sean's phone while driving down the road to Oklahoma. I think my mom was kind of shocked we actually did get tickets!

Because it's in the middle of someone's pasture, they can accomadate quite a few people. One report I've read already says there were 7500 people, and I don't think they were too far off! I marveled throughout the whole event how many people were there.

This year the concert was in Volland - which is between Alma and Alta Vista. You can mapquest it if you'd like, it really does exist. The scenery getting there was pretty amazing.

We KNEW we were on the right track when we hit traffic in the middle of a semi-paved road and when we saw this. Those are tents, cars and people in the distance...

Once we made it through all the traffic, and got ourselves parked, we waited for my sister, who was about a mile behind us, but through some luck only parked about 8 cars away from us. It was a big pasture - I'm amazed we we even found each other. While we were waiting we people watched. Where else could you see a Wyoming cowboy and his family park next to a brand new Johnson County corvette?

Finally we made it through all the entrace tents, took a beautiful hayrack ride across to the actual site, and found all kinds of tents to explore and things to do. Some were already finished up, because we didn't make it to the site until 6ish and the concert started at 6:45. This beautiful site was near the donors tent. My sister tried to explain to the event staff guarding the tent, that we had bought tickets and were therefore "donors." That reasoning didn't work, so we went to explore the other tents where they had offered 20 minute lectures, an instrument petting zoo, and storytelling.


Oh! And there were wagon rides...

I am still marveling at how many people were there. I just can't explain it. Some people looked right at home in there overalls or cowboy hats, and others in there fancy dresses with heeled boots, looked completely lost.

There were some photographers set up to just take pictures of the sunset and nothing else, so I thought I might as well get in a shot. It really was beautiful to listen to the orchestra play while the sun was setting.

But the site that really took my breath away was at the end, when the Fort Riley Mounted colorguard rode over the hill and through the crowd. They literally rode between the orchestra and the crowd. There was a horse that didn't appreciate the loudness of the music, but did do what his rider told him to do.

All in all, it was a great night of experiences, music, scenery, and fun! I can't wait to go next year.