It’s Bristol, baby!

It all started last October – yes, five months ago. NASCAR announced a historic event. Bristol Speedway would be holding dirt track races in March. This was something that hadn’t been done since the 1970s. Remembering the fun of dirt track stock car racing in the early 1960s when I was a teenager in New Hampshire, I suggested maybe we’d like to go. Stu jumped at the chance since he knew NASCAR wasn’t really my thing.

When we bought the tickets, we had no idea if we’d be going or not. 1) NASCAR didn’t know how COVID would impact their attendance allowance and 2) We didn’t know if we’d be selected. Stu bought a weekend package for races on both Saturday and Sunday, hoping to increase our chances. It worked!

When we purchased our tickets, we also booked our hotel. Most were quite expensive, approaching up to $200 a night. I found a hotel in the Wyndam system that was $90 with our senior rate and booked it.

The drive up on Friday was gorgeous – near perfect weather. We checked into the hotel and headed out to dinner at a local spot, Cootie Brown’s. Really enjoyed our meal and our beers!

We came back to the room, made the best of it as we watched the weather forecast for the next two days. Rain, rain, and more rain. We shared a picture of Cooties and our beers on Facebook and discovered our step-son-in-law was in town for the races, too. We made contact and arranged to meet for a late lunch the following day.

We woke Saturday to rain. It slowed a bit as we headed out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant (I don’t remember the name, but the food was good). We all hoped the track would dry and the truck races would go on as planned later in the afternoon.

The cloud formations when we drove to lunch were a bit intimidating as they moved towards us.

It just wasn’t to be and just before we headed out, bundled up for the rain and cold, we found out the race was postponed to Sunday.

After cooling our heels in the room most of the day, Stu went out and brought back some fast food for dinner. Not much to do but wait until morning – which had been showing a 100% chance of rain for a week.

We woke to rain, torrential rain, flooding rain, tornadoes in the area as well. We didn’t have long to wait before the news broke. Both races were rescheduled to Monday.

I did some Googling and found a movie theater close by and we headed off to watch the fun movie, Toma and Jerry. The theater was new and very nice! Reclining seats, wide armrests, social distancing in effect (we booked our seats in advance when we purchased our tickets online). The movie was fun and it was a great way to kill the afternoon.

While out, we noticed a Five Guys so later Stu went out and brought that back for dinner. (Yes, our diet suffered during our weekend vacation…). We also called the front desk and extended our stay one more night. We were fortunate we had the luxury of staying an extra day.

The morning brought clearer skies but the photos from late the day before were stunning! When we drove past the day before, this area was filled with vendor tents and vehicles. The creek running by the speedway overflowed and flooded this area and several campgrounds.

Fortunately, hours of sunshine and no rain, dried out the track and the races were on! We were ready, layered up because it was cold although sunny, we headed out to find our parking area. Who knew it would take us an hour to find it?

If you look real close at the sign with the red lettering and arrows, you will see the word DRAGWAY with an arrow pointing ahead. Our parking area was the Dragway parking area so we proceeded. It all went downhill from there. To keep it short, we got directions from no less than four people, including two police officers, before we got sent in the right direction (way out back of the speedway on a totally different road) before we got parked.

But we made it! We had a long walk and lots of steps – but we made it! And we dressed just right for the weather.

We arrived about in the middle of the truck races and they were fun to watch.

When they finished, Stu went down to get us something to eat and I watched them prepping the track for the main race. They brought out more dirt and spread it out, then watered it, then other non-race cars ran in the opposite direction to compact everything. It was quite the process and they spent almost two hours on it!

Stu gave up trying to get food – with it being in between race time, the few food spots were packed. He said he’d go back later.

Here are a few fun photos – you can see all of them in our SmugMug album including some pictures of the track prep between races.

Our seats were great, very little dust hit us and we weren’t sweltering in the sun nor was the sun ever in our eyes. If it had rained, we would have been under cover. Oh yeah, and we didn’t get to pick the seats, they were assigned to us.

 

All in all, it was great fun – oh yeah, the food. Never again…I had a hot dog. Almost cold and barely cooked. The burger Stu had wasn’t any better. High prices, long lines – if we ever go again, we’ll bring our own food.

We had a treat on the drive back to the hotel…

The hotel, we’d never stay there again. Strange furniture configuration, mildew on the shower curtain (found the last night there when we finally needed to shower), terrible mattress and pillows, maids not wearing masks, no elevators (we were stuck on the second floor because they were full), and thanks to COVID, breakfast was nothing worth getting there. Our first two days, we opted to help the maids and only asked for fresh towels, some more coffee packets and cups, and handed them our bagged trash in exchange for new bags. Since we were gone all day Monday, we expected to come back to a full service. Nope. Nothing. Nada. No fresh linens, wastebaskets full, bed unmade. Sigh…

The #2doods were happy to see us and spent the next two days at home like this…