June 26th -- The Caravan!
After yesterday's fun (but tiring) time at the Atlanta Motor Speedway it was a struggle to get up and packed and out of the house in time to meet the Georgia Caravan at the rallying point north of Atlanta.
The Caravan is leaving (well, the first group) at 9am. When we got to the staging area at 8AM we found that the first group had already headed out. The Georgia State Patrol (who was helping us get going smoothly) wanted groups of 25 or so so that's how it was done.
Even the "line 'em up" guys had little to do:
I expected to see hundreds of Corvettes there but, apparently, the Florida Caravan decided NOT to join us as planned and went on early in the AM on their own. So as soon as we had 25-30 cars, off we went:
An aside. I heard that a small boy from Florida and his mom had driven up to Atlanta to see the hundreds of Corvettes (he loves 'em, I'm told) and only got to see a few after all (the way it was done). Sad, but he DID get to participate.
The weather was great and the drive to Bowling Green was pretty uneventful. When we made our scheduled stop North of Chattanooga there were hundreds of cars there:
As predicted, the groups began to break down into smaller cells and made their way at various speeds to the North. Gael and I hooked up with friends Bob & Vicky Hardt and Buzz & Jackie Nielsen as a small red, white and blue cell:
(All wearing C5 Creations nose masks and mirror covers!)
Buzz showed us a shortcut bypassing Nashville (since a lot of congestion was expected there); "shortcut" was a bit of a misnomer -- but we eventually arrived at the NCM about 1:30P:
Already lots of people and Corvettes!
We found a great place to park and Mo and Rich Waller were able to put their 53-03CE #8 right next to us; two of these nifty cars in the same place at the same time:
We hung around the NCM all afternoon seeing old friends and making new ones. There were a ton of vendors there and all were busy, busy, busy.
This was cool. Most know now that Advanced Automotive Technologies makes the 53-03 Commemorative Edition; there are presently 41 cars delivered or in-process. But here's a similar effort that "Bear" from Florida is building ALL BY HIMSELF. That's right; he cut a 1953 body in half and grafted it onto a Z06. The car isn't finished but he brought it as a work in progress. Amazing!
The Historic Motorama Archives Fund particpants had a cocktail party at the University Plaza hotel from 4pm to 6pm. It was supposed to be a "tailgate" party in the hotel parking lot but just as we arrived at 3:45p the heavens opened and wind and rain drove us inside. The organizers were prepared and we had a swell time seeing again many of our compatriots from last year's Historic Motorama:
(The star of the show was Cameron Rhea)
Kurt Meier and Bev Kohn presented Buzz Nielsen (representing the NCM Board of Directors) with a check for $10,000 for the NCM's Historic Motorama Archives Fund. This is the first of five such checks the Motorama Archives Fund participants have pledged:
We were meeting friends for dinner so we headed south to Nashville about 6pm. We arrived at the Opryland Hotel an hour later and made it through check-in without incident. Found a pretty good parking place in the self-park lot (no way was I going to turn the CE over to valet parking). We had a nice dinner with friends at the Old Hickory restaurant inside the hotel (this place is HUGE!). And so, to bed.
