Tag: Travel

It’s Friday, it’s rained most of the night and today we expect to see many campers in all varieties of vehicles arrive for the weekend of festivities.

After a great egg, bacon & hash brown breakfast prepared by J-P & myself, the gang decided to go for a walk down Georgetown Road towards the IMS museum. Much has changed in the 30 years that have passed since Dean & I first visited the Indy500 in 1992. Gone are the bikers, the Christian cross carriers and the masses of beer-can throwing goons of the early Nineties… Instead the atmosphere seems relaxed but ready for a party. Maybe we’re a day early.

The walk along Georgetown Road brings back many memories and it’s carburetion day so the cars are on track…. The noise outside as we’re walking past while the drivers are practicing make the hairs on my arms stand on end…. We’re back! It’s not just a race, it’s an experience that one never forgets and even years later the sights, smells and sounds take me back to that first visit. No wonder people come back year after year trying to relive the memories of their first visit.

We arrive at the main gate and follow the sidewalk around the track outside of Turn-1. BANG! The sound is unforgettable, a car has just hit the outside wall in Turn-1 just through the fence and under the grandstand from where we were walking. Colton Herta lost the rear of his car, contacted the wall at about 200 mph and the car flipped upside down with him in it. We walked further along the sidewalk to where we could see a large screen within the track and saw that the medics extract him from the wrecked car. He walked away waving at the fans. Amazing.

Arriving at the tunnel to the museum we purchased tickets into the track and then walked through the tunnel to the IMS museum.

The IMS museum has all of the winning Indy500 cars back to the first race in 1911. Not all are on display, but a great selection from the past 111 years is available to view at any given time. A few are shown below.

After touring the IMS museum, we headed over towards the grandstand to locate our seats that we will be in for the race on Sunday. As there are 235,000 seats at this track, it’s good to know where yours are before the morning of the race.

Arriving at our seats we found that the PitStop challenge was underway immediately in front of our section and so stayed to watch the event. Amazing to watch the teams perform a timed 4 wheel tyre change and fueling in just a few seconds.

Returning to the campground we arrived during yet another rain shower during which two more people joined us from Ottawa. Brian and Aiden who are both friends of Dean and Cathy and are visiting the Indy500 for the first time.

As the evening wore on, the party intensified as groups all around us relaxed and began the celebration of the US Memorial Day weekend. We are confident that the rain of the past few days will be replaced by sunshine for the weekend, so here’s the hoping for warmer and dryer weather!

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!