The torrential rain cleared out late yesterday and left us with beautiful blue skies and cool, crisp temperatures. The weather app said it was 52 out, but it felt warmer in the sun. Today was the shortest route and we left at 7:30 with the plan to get to the venue by early afternoon. After all, it's only about three and a half hours driving time.
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| Great morning for a drive |
But, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice. 18 miles into the route, we arrived at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum. Tara called yesterday and asked if they were opening early for the Power Tour. She was told they were not and would open at 9 am as usual. We arrived a little before 8 and figured we'd just opt for a picture in front of the museum before continuing on.
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Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum
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It was a good thing we stopped, the person Tara talked to was flat wrong. The museum decided to open at 8 am (how convenient). We parked the cars and the lot was already starting to look like a car show in its own right.
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| Bringing cars to a car museum is kind of like bringing sand to the beach, but way better |
My mom is a big fan of this era of car, and Duesenbergs in particular, so this stop was one of the highlights of her trip. We spent about an hour checking out the amazing cars and history of the museum. My It's in the original headquarters for the ACD company and it was restored to original condition. They even have several offices of the various executives. It's a little like stepping back in time.
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| Welcome to the 1930's |
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| Our next long haul vehicle |
Finally, we got back in the cars and headed on. We took an hour and a half to go 18 miles, but we were on the way now. We were cruising through the route with people still along the way waving as the Power Tour rolled through small towns. As we came around a curve, there was "Ken's Car Wash." Since we were driving with Ken, who wanted to wash his car, we took that as an omen and made another quick stop to clean the road grime and dirt off the cars. The Corvette really needed it. It was a pretty uniform shade of gray. While we were cleaning the cars, Russ got a good opportunity to take pictures from the roadside.
With the cars now clean and gleaming in the sun, we got back on the route. We hit some traffic caused by road work in the middle of nowhere and, using a farmer's circular driveway to turn around, Tara found a detour that got us by it.
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| Good thing we washed the car. Maybe we'll be in the Magazine |
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| Just about every gas station is full of show cars |
We followed Highway 6 around Bowling Green and into Freemont, Ohio where we planned to stop for lunch. There was another big traffic snarl for an accident and Tara worked another farm road detour and we skirted it without much delay.
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| Along the Route |
We met the Texans (Ted, Lori, Kyle and Bob) for lunch at the Tackle Box 2 on the river in Freemont. It was an unusual place. Every inch of the place was filled with weird advertising, signs, lights or other oddities. They had a "service dog" that I think may have been the manager. He followed the various wait staff around and would walk out onto the patio to make sure everything was ok. The food was simple, but great. We had fried walleye sandwiches. I got a side of Tater Kegs, which I had thought was just a name for tater tots. It's not. The ones I got were the "spicy" flavor. They were about 3 times the size and were filled with buffalo chicken, sauce and cheese. Ted got lobster ones which he said were really good too.
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| Riverfront parking |
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| Inside the Tackle Box 2 |
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| Tater Kegs |
We finally arrived at the Summit Motorsports Park dragstrip at about 3:30. We heard they were giving out the Long Hauler signs early this year and were afraid no one would still be at the venue when we arrived. We couldn't have been more wrong. This was the busiest and most full of any venue we've seen on this trip. Maybe it was the rainout from yesterday, maybe people were enjoying the weather, or maybe they just didn't want the Power Tour to be over.
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| It started to thin when I took this picture, but every spot was full and this was less than a quarter of the parking lot |
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| The Motor Medics- these guys fixed 175 cars on Tour this year |
We went to get clocked in and get our Long Hauler signs and pick up our magnets for today and yesterday. To our disappointment, Holley had given away all of yesterday's magnets. They used to stamp or mark each credential and give one magnet per credential, but midway through this Tour, they ran out of ink and just started handing them out. As a result, people took more than one or non-Long Haulers took some. It wouldn't be a huge deal except that the magnets all come together to make a single image. They are going to post the artwork for the magnet online so we can print our own. It's not exactly the same, but I'll make it work.
After punching in and getting our signs, we walked the vendor midway one last time, strolled through the hundreds of cars between the midway and our parking spots. There was a pretty good traffic jam of cars leaving the venue and we were in prime position to watch them slowly roll by.
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| We made it, again. |
Once traffic had thinned out, Tara and I, my parents and Russ hit the road and started the drive home. We decided to put a few hours under our belts today and stopped south of Columbus, Ohio. We had dinner with Tara's mom's friends Becky and Jerry who live in the area and then headed to the hotel for the night. By that point, I was done and decided this blog post could wait until this morning.
Here are some more pictures from our last day:
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