A visit with the ghosts of the Alabama gang

Hi! It has been more than 3 weeks since we have been home. My wireless did not work when it was turned back on and I just got it straightened out so here is the last travel chapter. Getting home has been interesting. My first action once the motorhome was cleaned out was to install a storm door on the back of my house. Once we got into the project, we found that water had been getting into the wood under the door and it needed a little more than just cleaning up. Hmmm, bigger project than expected. ………
Back to the trip.

The last big item on our agenda this summer (is it still summer??) is the UAW Ford 500 here at Talladega. Following our departure from Music City, we headed south. We grabbed coffee and propane from the KOA and were soon on the road. There was a section of 65 still in the city limits that was under construction and, of course, the computer got confused and sent us down the wrong road (detour situation). Even this did not set us back as we found a gas station and put in some gas using the area around the gas station to turn around. Turning around with this rig is often an adventure. We recovered and continued on. After we crossed into Alabama, we saw a sign for Preston’s Western Wear and exited. We looked around and finally found the footwear section (a separate room out behind the Carhart room. We met a guy who was with the band Heartland. They sang the National Anthem at the Kansas Race. He was a guitar player with the band but stepped back because of the time it took away from his family (2 year old daughter). He continues to work with the band as a stage manager when they tour and gets to spend more time with his family. Cheryl found some boots that she liked so now we both have hats and boots.

There was also a great looking bbq place right near by but we could not stop there as there was no place for us to park the rig (this was a common theme throughout this trip). Not letting them get the best of us, we motored down the road a ways and stopped at a Shoney’s for Catfish and Fried chicken (that’ll teach them).

The Alabama Welcome center had a Saturn 1 rocket with an Apollo capsule on top of it. It was immense (consider how much bigger the Saturn V was). They also had a small version of the Viet Nam Wall with only the names of the Alabama soldiers who died in that war. It was black stone just like the original but was much smaller and had the names arranged by county rather than the date they died.

Soon, we were back on the road. We came to the intersection of I 65 and I 20 and headed east towards Atlanta. We turned off at Talladega, topped off the tank (to make sure we could run the generator) and drove into the track. Not knowing what the setup was here, we decided to drive through and then come back. The campgrounds closest to the track are all reserved so we looked for the best of the free campgrounds. We found one right across the street from a reserved campground that was right next to the track so we turned in and talked to the gate people. They said we could camp wherever we wanted to (there were no lines on the ground or people telling you where to go. There also seemed to be a lot of space. We looked around. The people who were already there had mostly taken up spaces along the road. We picked a field to the left as we drove in and drove out into the middle of it, decided to situate so that our sitting area was shaded in the afternoon/evening and we had the morning sun and parked. It took only a few minutes to set up and soon we were sitting under our canopy, in our lawn chairs with drinks on our table watching the other people come in. We were in shorts and t-shirts and were perfectly comfortable. We sat there until well after dark and then came inside. It was hot inside and we opened windows turned on the generator and watched TV for a while (central time, CSI Miami is on at 9 vice 10 at home).

This morning, I got up and made coffee and we sat outside and watched the world go by. It did not take long to get hot. We sat out there for an hour or more then moved inside and turned on the generator and A/C while I fixed breakfast. Now we are going to get dressed and wander over the track and check it out. There is also a motorsports hall of fame here. We will look for that also.

We found the Hall of Fame. It was a pretty neat place. It brought back memories of years past. They had an interesting array of cars. They had Ricky Craven’s Talladega wreck where he flew up high enough to have cars drive underneath him. They had Mike Waltrip’s Bristol crash where he hit so hard that the body sheared away from the car. They had Ron Bouchard’s car that he won with here. They had Tiny Lund’s car that he won with in the Daytona 500. He had pulled Marvin Panch from a burning wreck during a test session for the Daytona 24 hour. Panch not drive in the 500 and recommended that his car owner give the car to Tiny who proceeded to win the Daytona 500. They had the car that Harry Gant won 4 races in a row and the Underbird (Kulwicki fans will know what that means) that Alan Kulwicki won the Championship with. They had some other cars too including the rocket powered car that Stan Barrett used to break the sound barrier on wheels. They had some old coupes and modified (including an old Richie Evans car). They had a room dedicated to the old Ford flathead (cool because I used to race a Ford flathead (boy was that a long time ago!!). They had little write-ups on each of the inductees into the hall. There were a lot of my old heroes: Jimmy Clark, Mark Donohue, Ayrton Senna, Dan Gurney, Colin Chapman, Fireball Roberts, and many many more.

After spending a couple of hours in the Hall of Fame, we walked out to the frontstretch side of the track. We had hopes of wandering around a while just checking the place out but they had a gate you had to pass through and no matter how hard we smiled, they would not let us through. We asked about a couple of the other pathways we saw and were told that none of them went anywhere we could go. This was disappointing since we had wandered around the track at Dover for the entire week before the race. We started to walk back down the path we had come up on and one of the sheriffs there asked us if we would like a ride back to our campground. We agreed (it was a chance to talk to him one on one and perhaps get some more information). He told us that there was nothing scheduled at the track until Friday at 11:00AM, I said that I thought that the track would be open on Thursday for ARCA practice since they would be racing on Friday and the Nextel Cup Cars had practice and qualifying on Friday. When you add the Truck Practice to that, it doesn’t leave much time on Friday (this morning’s paper (Wednesday) says the trucks will qualify on Friday also so I have no Idea what the schedule is for the weekend. At Dover, the Friday race practiced and qualified on Thursday. The Cup Cars practiced and Qualified on Friday; had a long practice session on Saturday and raced on Sunday and the Saturday Race practiced on Friday, qualified on Saturday AM and raced late on Saturday. We will wait and see what happens. It does not seem like they can get everything in if they wait until Friday.

We walked up the road this morning. We could see a gas station up the hill from us so we thought we would check it out. We had inventoried our water this morning and figured that we didn’t have enough so we went in search of. They had rented most of their space out to vendors and we took a quick look into the tents as we walked through. They had left just enough space to get a couple of cars in for gas. We checked out the store and found that half of the store was dedicated to beer. We found a stack of cases of half liter bottles of water and a grand total of 2 gallon jugs. Cheryl quickly grabbed the jugs and I grabbed a case of the bottles. It came to $16.00. $2.00 for each of the $.60 jugs of water and $12.00 for the $5.99 case of water. It is a race weekend and we were not able to get out to get the “cheap” stuff so we paid the money and gladly walked back to camp with our spoils of victory. It is hot down here. It got hotter as the day went on but there was a breeze in the afternoon which coupled with our shade from the camper and awning made for a fairly comfortable afternoon. I called my mother and told her about the heat and all she could say was to enjoy it because it was not hot at all at home and we would be there soon enough. OK, it wasn’t all that bad. We did miss summer completely so we are enjoying a little heat now. We have gone southern. I am fixing collard greens and ham hocks for supper. They smell delicious and I can’t wait to dig into them. The incoming campers have picked up in intensity. There is a steady line coming in and the crazy people are starting to arrive. We jut had a camper come in and set up in the road into our field; right across the entrance. That left only one other place to come in but I am sure when that fills in someone will find some other way in. Our field has about 60% filled up but I am told that filled up doesn’t matter. Once the campground is full, another 50% of whatever is here will come in and find space. I hope they like camping right by our generator or generator exhaust. Some of the people that have come in near us have run their generator 24 hours a day. I don’t know what they are running but they seem to need constant electricity. They came in sometime last night after we went inside and when we got up, their generator was running. There were no signs of life anywhere but the generator was running. They spent 5 hours this morning trying to align their satellite dish. Finally a woman came out of the trailer and got it aligned in a half hour. The moon isn’t full but it isn’t far from it. That most likely means that there will be a full moon this weekend. From everything I have heard, that isn’t good news. This crowd has a reputation for craziness that does not need a full moon to enhance it.

Another day another heat wave. We awoke this morning to find campers right up against the back of our camper. Some tenters pulled in and set up near the head of our camper. The available space around us is collapsing rapidly. We made coffee and sat outside. We were earlier than the other mornings because we had to hang place mats off the awning to keep the sun out of our eyes. We watched the new people around us set up. They rented porta-potties and marked out a large space. We expect they are awaiting other people because they have a tiny tent and a large cache of beer. The field across the street is filling up. I now see a policeman on a horse riding in amongst the campers. We watched several horse trailers pulling in yesterday with various police department logos on the doors. Now they are patrolling the campground. This would appear safer than the cars they are driving. They have strict speed limits within the borders of the campground but I have noticed that the police cars are the biggest offenders. Some of them tear around the roads like they are late to get somewhere.

Last night we saw some people in the next field setting off some large complicated sets of fireworks. Immediately, there were flashing blue lights that converged on the spot and sat there for quite some time with the flashers going. We did not see any fireworks anywhere after that.

At about 8 am we heard the jet driers (or blowers) on the track and shortly afterwards, we heard race cars on the track. The people the other day said that there would be no public entry to the track today and the paper said basically the same thing but undaunted and also unbelieving, I called the ticket office and was told point blank that the practice today was closed and there was no public entry. I have never heard of this. When I asked why (not expecting a legitimate reply) I was told that the drivers wanted it that way so they closed the track. Yeah, I believe that! At Dover, we could go into the track days before it was open to fans or teams. There was a driving school going on there and we watched that. I drove by Sears Point once and went in and watched a driving school. I find it incomprehensible that a track would not let the fans in when there was a practice and qualifying session going on for that weekend’s events. Bizarre!

Hey, it’s me again. Lots have happened since last I wrote. We went on our morning walk. We went around the North Park Campground. It is huge. We wanted to see if we could find the Talladega Short Track, a dirt track that is across the street from the Super Speedway. Well, the short track was at the other end of our campground. We hoped to catch one of the night races there. Cheryl has never been to a dirt track so we will hit that one night. We walked up the main road to get to the convenience store to pick up a few more things and what did we find?? A small RV park right next to the gas station. We stopped in to talk with them thinking we should take down the phone numbers for use in the future (if we decide to come back). They still had openings and we grabbed one. A chance to get out of the zoo we found ourselves camped in with generators running 24 hours a day and people setting up right up against your camper. We went back, scouted out an escape route and packed up and moved. This would allow us to have electricity instead of running the generator, water (all we can use) and most importantly a sewer connection. We had been using our tanks and water sparingly and now we can use all of it we want. Of course, this comes with a price but now than we have been here one night, it is definitely worth the money. The place is quiet yet we still get the fireworks from across the street. The dirt track is just down the street. We saw the lights go on last night. They had go-cart racing there last night. Today has dawned cloudy and windy. It has cooled off greatly and it looks like rain. It is not supposed to rain just be cold. The front came through just a few minutes ago. We got up this morning and put on the AC for a while to take the edge off the temperature. We don’t need it now.

It is now Saturday. Two days of racing have gone into the books. Juan Pablo Montoya had a very successful first stock car race. Ganassi has moved him around the country testing stock cars on different tracks to give him a feeling for the cars. It is expected that he will have a big learning curve moving from F1 to NASCAR. Well, I am here to tell you that his first race was impressive. He qualified second and immediately took the lead for several laps. Then the other cars ganged up on him and passed him kicking him back several spots. He was then a victim of someone else’s accident and spent several laps getting his car fixed. He didn’t lose a lap since they were under a yellow flag but once the race got going again, he worked his way carefully up through the pack until he was third. It was late and getting quite dark. There were 15 laps to go and Montoya was in third place when there was a large accident behind him. They decided that it would take longer to clean up than there was daylight left so they called the race and Montoya was listed as third. Although I was never able to get his radio frequency and couldn’t listen in to the team discussions, his capability in a car that was heavy, slow and less than nimble was really impressive. The plan is to get him into several races in several different organizations over the rest of this year to give him the seat time he needs to get used to this kind of racing.

Today, we attended NEXTEL Cup qualifying and the Craftsman Truck race. Mark Martin was on the pole in a Roush Truck. Mark’s plan was to retire from Cup racing after this season and race a truck full time. He announced today that he was leaving Roush at the end of this season and will stay in NEXTEL Cup with MB2 racing. He will drive part time in the US Army sponsored Chevrolet. He will race 20 races and a rookie will drive the car in the other 16 races. His truck racing is up in the air as his plan was to drive a Roush truck and he is no longer with Roush Racing. I have a great deal of trouble believing that Mark Martin (Mr. Ford) will end his career in a Bowtie.

Mark Started from the pole this afternoon and immediately had an overheating problem due to some trash that got caught in his radiator. He dropped back into the pack and tried to lose the trash in the air turbulence of the pack but soon he was so hot that he had to pit to get the radiator cleaned off. He came back out on the lead lap but within 10 laps the snarling pack swallowed him up and he was a lap down. He said he wasn’t too worried because it was early and there would be yellows and he was in the position to get the “lucky Dog” pass to get back on the lead lap. That is exactly what happened and within 20 laps, he was back on the lead lap and working his way back to the front. He did and he won and everyone was on their feet for the last part of the race. Several great cars were on his bumper. They did get by him but he got back in front and won.

We didn’t go to the dirt track last night as we were tired. We ended up not going tonight either. Our hosts here at the campground threw a cookout and invited us so we were sociable instead of dirt trackers. They had smoked pork chops (1 ½ inches thick). They were so tender you could cut them with a plastic knife (which we did though most people just picked them up to eat). We also had bbq beans, potato salad, sweet potato casserole (with pecans and brown sugar) and some really great rolls. It was served with unsweetened ice tea. This was a real southern cookout (everything but the okra). We aren’t going to make the races tonight either. They ran last night until after 1. We decided to be sociable and frankly didn’t want to be out until 1 either.

You cannot believe how much the news about Mark Martin has bummed me out. He has been one of my favorites since he first came to NASCAR. He has always driven a Ford and has been the one thing Ford fans could count on. I feel let down. I felt the same way when Parcells announced during the preparation for the Super Bowl (or do I have to say the “Big Game”) that he was leaving the Pats to go coach the (Damned) Jets and threw the team into turmoil on the eve of the biggest game in the history of the franchise (to that date). Nuff said; I will continue to root for him while he is in a Roush Ford and then we’ll see (it seems un-American to root against the Army car).

I have decided that Talladega is my new favorite track. The racing there is totally different from anywhere else I have been (All of my trips to Daytona were before the restrictor plate was mandated. We had seats right in the middle of the tri-oval (the bent part of the frontstretch) in the 59th row (8 rows from the top). They had just repaved the track following the spring race and the track was smooth. You just knew when several cars were running laps in the 197/198 mph range that NASCAR would change something before the race and they did. On Saturday when the sun rose over Talladega, NASCAR distributed new smaller restrictor plates. No one had any time to practice or make adjustments for them and since it was an impound race, you couldn’t touch the car between qualifying and the start of the race. For all the squawking, it didn’t seem to make any difference. The cars still ran over 195 in the draft. The racing was great… I can see why people love the racing at Talladega and Daytona. It is different and special. The ending however was not. Jr. was leading with Jimmy Johnson right on his bumper with 10 laps to go. Brian Vickers was third. There was a line of about 10 cars after a late restart before they went 2 and 3 wide the rest of the field. No one stepped out of line because they were afraid of getting hung out to dry in the draft and losing 20 places. Everyone was waiting for the last 2 laps to make their move. Johnson seemed to have the fastest car and was patient waiting for the last lap. I told Cheryl to watch Johnson, I predicted that he would bump Jr. out of the way vice passing him cleanly. He has done this before. He started to make a move coming down the backstretch and his teammate (Vickers) went with him to help push him by Jr. Well, that should have been the plan. Johnson was going for the championship as was Jr. and Vickers was moving on at the end of the season to another team (no career wins). Well, he caught Johnson’s fender and spun him up into Jr. causing them both to spin taking the win himself relegating his two adversaries to 23rd and 24th place. Not my kind of victory. The kind of victory that people take when they can’t make the pass legitimately. NASCAR once again looked away at the last minute and did nothing. Vickers has a victory and 2 of the Championship Chasers who ran up front all day got screwed with finishing positions in the 20s. Arrgh! (and I wasn’t rooting for any of them, Mark and Kasey Kahne finished in the top 10) Time to climb down off the soap box again. We just went through Bristol, TN. I have been trying to get tickets to that place for 5 years. This may be the closest I ever get to it. Oops, that bump was the Virginia State border.

It is hard to believe we are on our way home. It has been a really great summer but now it is time to go home and get some work done. Once we get all that done, we can start planning our next adventure. We were considering the Maritimes (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland) but the price of gas in Canada and the exchange rate of money makes that doubtful. The upper west coast is a possibility or maybe we will just bang around New England for a couple of months. The nice thing about RVing is that you don’t have to plan it and make a bunch of reservations (except for some rare special things like rafting the Grand Canyon or staying at Phantom Ranch). Almost 400 down and 850 to go. Oh yea, Cheryl is driving (if you haven’t figured that out). See ya!

The computer screwed us up again. When we got to Scranton and tried to make the right turn onto I84, she sent us all over Scranton. She kept changing directions and sending us down several different streets but we persevered and finally found I84 and headed east. We started looking for a place to grab a few winks and the first couple of rest areas were pretty full leaving only places on the entry roads near the highway. We stopped in one of those and sat for a few minutes but each of the trucks that went by on the highway shook us severely. We moved on and eventually found an empty space, pulled in and crawled into bed. We grabbed 4 hours sleep and hit the road again.

Even though it was hard to head home, once you started getting close there was an excitement. We felt the same thing when we were getting near Alaska and once again when we neared the US Border into Montana. Soon after hitting the road, we passed the junction of 84 and 684 in Brewster, NY; a place we often pass through on our travels and the excitement started to build. We wanted to get through Hartford before the morning rush hour hit. The sun came up and we started to really feel like we were closing in on home. We stopped on the Mass Turnpike for something to eat (sausage biscuits at twice the price we paid in Alabama the day before (1.89 vice 1.00 telling us we are on the Mass Pike). A traffic jam due to an accident on 495 slowed us down and cost us an hour. I can honestly say that the NH Toll booth on 95 never looked so good and soon we were at a crawl moving up 236. Then home. I will be back with a wrap up once we get settled in. It has been really fun writing this and I hope you all have enjoyed it. I still have to deal with the pictures from the trip. I was talking to someone who told me of the problems that they had trying to comment on the blog. I apologize for that. If you have any comments please sent them to estabrke@gmail.com . If I had known that there was a problem, I would have provided this earlier. Well, I have some more cleaning to do on both the camper and the house so I will see ya later!! I will come back with one more chapter to let you know what it is like to return to life in South Berwick.