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September 2nd:

Mom: By the way…. Guess who will be at the State Fair this year? Go ahead guess. REO Speedwagon and Styks (SP?). Who wants to go to the state fair?

Laura: I am SO there to see REO Speedwagon again. That guy was amazing!

September 9th:

Mom: I need to find out who wants to go to the fair with us and see REO Speedwagon and Styx. It is on September 15th (Thurs night) at 7:30 p.m. The tickets are $34 and that includes entrance into the fair ($5). (We won’t be mad if you don’t want to go).

Laura: Yes, Mike and I are going to go with you to the fair. Do we need to get the tickets beforehand? Do we want to drive down together? It’s a school night, so I don’t want to overdo it, but I can’t miss REO Speedwagon. They were so great and inspirational last time!

We want to eat dinner there (FRESH CORN!) and have time to look at the booths before the concert starts. If you’re not interested in the booths, then maybe Mike and I will go down at 5:30 and meet you there. What do you think?

I think they were amazing last night! Both Styx and REO Speedwagon were energetic, got the crowd going and really rocked the place! Tommy Shaw looks a little like Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. He rocks it better than Zaphod ever could, even though he was the President of the Galaxy. Kevin Cronin was inspirational and left me feeling so happy about my life.

Between the shows, there were fireworks. I only got one fairly good shot of them, all the rest were blurry messes. At the end, Kevin called Styx onto the stage. For their finale, they brought out Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. He played piano with them (Johnny B. Good). Sorry the picture’s so blurry. My battery was dead by then and it was a struggle to get the camera to take any pictures at all. Our Governor is the guy in the red shirt who is hugging the bass player in the last picture. I was so shocked.

I took over 200 pictures and these are the only ones that really turned out. You would be amazed if you knew how far away from the stage we were sitting (Section EE Row 15). We were as far back as you could go without being outside the venue, yet I still got a couple of relatively clear pictures.

Mike promised me that we could go back to the fair this weekend to look at the booths and try our hands at taking pictures of the neon and rides and all the happy people.