From dirt roads to slip-and-slides: Country Thunder gets muddy

With campers partying for days in a row at Country Thunder, the music festival’s grounds aren’t exactly known for being dry.

But that’s especially true when it rains.

Recent rainfall has transformed the dirt roads into muddy slip-and-slides, and some campers aren’t happy about it.

“It’s just not very fun in the rain. It’s miserable,” Dalis Prawdzik said, adding how the mud covering her rain boots made it feel like weights strapped around her feet.

Read more:

• School bus sleepovers and kiddie pool cool downs in Craven
• ‘Craven Block Parents’ giving lost Country Thunder fans a safe walk home
• LISTEN: Country Thunder music festival roars into Craven this weekend

Prawdzik and her friends had just come out of the shower facilities, which cost campers $10.

For Prawdzik, who’s been coming to Craven for three years, washing off is a necessity, regardless of the mud.

“When you feel gross and dirty or don’t want to do much, you’re just down. If you get clean, you wanna party,” she said.

No rain check on partying

Not everyone needed to be scrubbed off to have a good time though, with Cody Morash brainstorming mud activities for him and his friends.

“We might have to run maybe some mud kickball or something and just get absolutely dirty in it,” Morash said.

One of Morash’s friends had already spent some time in the mud the night before, falling several times after partying a bit too hard.

The punishment for the overindulged, muddy friend was spending the night outside.

While the boys were in good spirits about the previous evening, with a new outlook on the benefits of mud, others weren’t feeling the same.

“I shouldn’t have worn this white,” Sarah Blomquist said while wearing a light grey sweatsuit as she walked around the grounds.

Despite borrowing her friend’s boots, she voiced concerns about slipping in the mud –a sentiment held by more than just her.

“I might just accidentally do it, trying to go to the bathroom, honestly,” Adria Biberdorf said about falling into the sludge.

With so much mud surrounding the porta-potties, multiple campers voiced concerns about falling while trying to access the bathrooms. (Marija Robinson/980 CJME)

Accidents in the bathroom

Issues of mud at the ground’s porta-potties were brought up by multiple women.

“When you try to go the porta-potties, it’s just mud. And if you fell over there, oh my, I would not want that,” Prawdzik said.

Blomquist said her friend decided to walk all the way to the permanent bathrooms by the grandstand to avoid using the temporary options.

“These porta-potties are disgusting. The mud is packed onto the ground of the porta-potty, so when you go in there, your feet are stuck,” she said.

But even the rain and consequent mud couldn’t dampen people’s excitement for the festival’s three headliners: Jason Aldean, Bailey Zimmerman and Def Leppard.

Campers looked forward to the performances and an eventual hot shower.