The alarm woke us at 6:00am. Ugh. We wanted to arrive at the camping field mid morning so as to hopefully get a site closer to the track than those that would arrive later in the day. This means an early start in an effort to avoid traffic. And so. after walking 5 laps of the Walmart parking lot and having a quick snack while preparing for departure, we headed out for a Cracker Barrel breakfast in Greenfield, IN. Mmm.
The remaining drive to the Indy500 camping field was good; however, the sky’s were threatening. Arriving at Lot 1-C the rain had begun and all of the staff were dressed in full rain gear. We got parked up OK and have put boards under all wheels in the hopes that this will prevent getting stuck should it get really wet and muddy (something we’ve witnessed here in the 1990’s).
We were able to park facing in opposite directions so that our awnings could be extended and thus form one large covered area between our RV’s. We enjoyed this a lot today as the rains continued until mid-afternoon.
Part of the fun of arriving at a campsite for an event such as this is watching the arrivals of others. Camping vehicles of all sizes are brought to these events, and some probably shouldn’t be really considered ‘campers’. Due to the continued rain, we witnessed several campers get stuck and then towed out of the mud and onto their campsite. The staff here are well prepared and have a tracked bobcat they use to extract stuck vehicles.
As the day wore on the “show” changed from vehicle watching to people watching. Now parked up and settled, the campers enjoy a beverage or two and prepared their sites with tables, chairs, bbq’s, flags, and other paraphernalia. Some seem to go to some length trying to outdo their neighbors. Our neighbor actually brought a lawnmower to cut the field grass to better suit their personal tastes.
Late afternoon was dry as we prepared and enjoyed a BBQ chicken dinner, the sun even made an appearance. Looking ahead the forecast for Saturday and Sunday (Race Day!) look to also be dry and sunny.
This next paragraph is blank….. as I retired to the van and slept for a couple of hours. Evidently the conversation and drinks continued, but I missed it all. I understand that there were a few ‘unusual’ campground sightings.
At around 9:30pm the rains returned and we all agreed that this would mark the end of a long couple of days for us and so we cleaned up our site and retired to bed. Good night one and all!
