Posted on July 11, 2010 - by Brett
Cornerstone Festival 20ten
Cornerstone Festival 2010 was my first time experiencing the Cornerstone community. I went with expectations of what I was going to experience but I didn’t anticipate on the community that the people create like the sense that we are all a big family or that we’ve all known each other for a long time. I would end up in conversation with someone for a half hour that I nearly ran into and just started some good conversation.
I CAN say that I did not miss packing one thing! I went over my checklist 4-5 times and thought about what I was bringing for about a month before we left. After running sound for Element Church on a Sunday morning, Caleb and I took off to drive straight through to Marietta, IL. We stopped off in St. Louis to meet up with a friend for coffee. My timing was exact but I forgot about the time change! We were meeting at 6am but I got us there at 5am! So Caleb pulled out his cot and slept in the Starbucks parking lot.
After Starbucks, we have another 4 hours of driving through nothing but cornfields to get to Cornerstone Festival. That is probably the hardest part, not the 18 hours we spent getting to St. Louis, the driving through the same scenery for hours. 11am Monday morning we arrive and blast through the line and see a spot to set up our tent. We set up the tent and realize that the tent is not large enough to hold our stuff and our cots! Oops. Luckily we kept the Element right next to the tent so we didn’t have to walk too far for our food and clothes.
To cut down on costs, we stopped at a Walmart and picked up ham, turkey, cheese and bread. This became the staple for every meal. Cornerstone has carnival food but that can wreak havoc on you if you eat too much of it in the middle of the non-stop heat!
Camp is set up and we already hear bands playing on the stages. The metal begins! So we jump on our bikes and tour the campgrounds. Tents begin to pop up anywhere and everywhere they possibly can. If you watch the video below, we went and watched a few shows starting with a hardcore band with a female singer; this singer has a deeper voice than what I can even produce! After the breakdowns there would be a pause in the songs and then the girl would flex right before singing again and it freaked me out! Scary scary stuff. Walking a few tents down we see a band that’s hardcore (go figure) but they have some serious talent! In The Midst of Lions has some sick guitar riffs and they even have a midget screaming in certain parts of the songs too.
To sum up the first day there, we go to the skatepark and talk with some of the skaters and had one do a kickflip over Caleb. That was day 1.
