With 2000 miles between us and Mesa Arizona we have seen a lot of the US highway system.  We have been trying to stay off the interstate until somewhere in Texas it got so boring we decided the interstate could be no worse and we were right! 

 On interstate 10 somewhere in the middle of Texas out of nowhere a swarm of bees decided that they could withstand a blow to our windshield and at least a 1000 bees met there maker on our windshield, for a few it was a slow painful death, others it was instant.  From inside the RV at 60 miles per hour it was loud and looked like someone was throwing mud at us from thin air.  At our next fuel stop we were scraping bee juice off the front end.  Now that is not something I have ever seen or heard of but it was exciting and made my heart skip a beat as it was happening.

 We have been on the move for over 2 weeks now and we are ready to sit for a few days so we arrived at a nice State Park in Georgia today and will stay at least 3 days before moving to North Carolina for the weekend.

 

 

Carl Edwards makes the end exciting!

 

 

View from our roof

Paul chose Talladega for the excitement of the race and we got it.   We didn’t actually see the big one but we knew something big was going to happen.  We chose the infield because you can see the track from your camping site and there is lots of places to sit and watch the race.  We chose the most popular place where you could see a good portion of the track.   From our vantage point we could see the lead change and then watch the leader board and watch the lead change again before they crossed the start line and then change again when they got to the back side again.

If you look closely you can see the Nascar Sprint Cup cars racing around the track.  This was taken 1 lap before the first crash that took a favorite out, Jeff Gordon.  He later returned to finish the race with a car that was missing most of its rear end!

Paul and I are not your normal Nascar fan;  Most fans sit on this lawn with only an ice chest full of BudLight and maybe a chair, never an umbrella and usually no shirt. 

The track is over 2 miles around so no way can you see the whole track from anywhere.  There were 3 big accidents that took drivers out of the race, the first happening with only 6 laps of the over 180 laps of the race.  This seems like such a waste to me but I guess it is part of the sport.  The second accident started right infront of where we were sitting and if we would have ran to the fence like many of the fans we would have been able to see the wreckage.  Pretty exciting to watch the fans -some were actually cheering when the accidents occurred once they knew no one was injured. 

 Talladega fans come prepared to party.  Once you enter the infield on Thursday you cannot remove your vehicle until Monday and the only way out is a little train shuttle that takes you out the tunnel, then you have to go probably 5 miles to find a store so everyone comes in with some food and plenty of beer – BudLight in particular.  If you look at my hand holding a glass of margarita I am demonstrating the pose that most every fan has from Thursday night until Monday morning!  I am sure there will be injuries just from having their arms bent like that for 4 days!

The other thing that is mandatory is that you carry or pull an ice chest so that you are never without the beer in your hand!!!

Some of the fans feel a need to overdress!

And some do some really crazy things!  This guy below drinks charcoal fluid and then blows his breath and lights his lighter!  If you look close you can see the smoke but it was a huge flame – like Pete’s dragon from the movies! 

 Paul spent a lot of his time on  Talladega Blvd.  trying to get pictures of the girls showing their boobs for beads!!!  We aren’t showing those, you will have to go and get your own!

It is about 550 miles from Branson to Talladega so we left Wed. afternoon spending the night on the road and we arrived at the speedway about 5 pm on Thursday to wait in line until about 8:30 before our group was allowed in.  Once we are inside the track there is no one to direct you so you are wandering among RV’s, tents, cars just looking for signs for your site.  This is pretty exciting, a bunch of beer drinking was going on in line and a bunch of people were already inside the track from Wednesday night – drinking lots of beer so asking for directions was not only hard but pretty entertaining!  Amazing how many people come every year and have “their spot”.  We found our spot, parked and began to get acquainted with the neighbors and the local customs – Budweiser Light is the prefered beer in this part of the country, in fact their are not many people wandering around without one in their hands!

A funny thing happened on the way to Talladega- Wednesday evening Paul pulled into the Walmart parking lot to get some groceries and parked next to another RV that was spending the night.  Chatting we found out they had lived in Los Gatos before moving back to Tennessee a couple of years back.  They had friends along that currently live in Los Gatos and the 4 of them were traveling to Branson and staying in the campground we just left.  Then we stopped on Thursday about 50 miles from Talladega and while we were pumping the 75 gallons into the tank another guy pulled into the pump next to us in an RV and asked where we were headed.  It turns out he was going to the same place we were and camping in the same section.  This place is huge and our section probably holds 2 to 3 hundred RV’s – He is parked 2 spots down!    This country is pretty small!!!

Talladega is a pretty big Party and I will tell more and share some pictures when we all sober up!