Boggity Boggity Boggity!

Or as my DH put it, "WoooHooo! Watkins Glen!"

We've officially driven on the Watkins Glen, NY NASCAR road track.

Note I said "driven" vs "raced" as there was no racing involved nor permitted, but let me back up a little before that...

I've just returned home from 3 days away at various locations and attractions around Watkins Glen, New York where we went for a PT Cruiser event - "Cruise the Glen 4". Despite Mother Nature's lack of co-operation on Saturday (it POORED rain - with flash flood warnings, no less!), the overall weekend was a great success and the weather was perfect when it really counted for Sunday's track time.

Darryl and I left late Friday morning (much later than we'd planned) to drive down. We got to the Queenston/Lewiston border crossing around 11:30am and FINALLY got through at almost 2pm!! We will NEVER cross at Lewiston again. Unbelievable.

Darryl took over driving and I dozed for a couple of hours as I'd had very little sleep Thursday night (fell asleep at 4 and was up at 5 showering and packing up the car!) so I can't comment on much of the drive down except for when we approached Geneva.

We never found out for sure, but there must be a University in Geneva. We noticed gorgeous huge homes lined up along both sides of the tree-lined highway with Seneca Lake in the background all with either Greek characters above the doors or names like "Hampton House" or "Frey House" or somesuch thing.

Once we got south of Geneva, we drove along side Seneca Lake through some of the most beautiful countryside I've seen in a good long while. There were vineyards on either side of the road everywhere we looked.

We picked out a vineyard/resort to check out on a future trip.

We arrived in Watkins Glen proper around 6pm and drove straight to the track (a little south east of town) only to realize when we got there that Friday and Saturday's events were being held at a park right in town on the south shore of Seneca Lake, so we turned 'round and headed back, arriving around 6:30pm. There were dozens and dozens of PTs there already and the host club had a nice spread of food out for everyone. We registered and went to find Maggie at the Race & Street booth to pick up my big ticket item of the weekend (which I'd ordered some time ago), a new PTeazer smoothie rollpan bumper...now I just have to find someone to paint and install it for me ;o) Oh - and decide if I'm going to retain the factory single exhaust or finally bite the bullet and go with the dual.

I have no photos from Saturday because it rained ALL day. We spent the day under the tent fly trying to stay somewhat dry. I can't even tell you how many cars were there since many came in the morning, but didn't stay when it became apparent that the weather wasn't about to improve anytime soon. There were even flash flood warnings! We also connected with some people we know through Moosedog (Hi Carl, Meg, Elkie & Burliegh!) and they told us that the park we are in sometimes completely floods in heavy rains!! I could just about envision all the poor happless PT's floating away down Lake Seneca!! Yikes!

The event organizers kind of sped the day along and we did the draws and trophies early and we were able to leave the park by 1pm.

I can't confirm for 100% certain, but I overheard that we placed 4th in our class (not too shabby!). They gave out trophies to 1st-3rd place. Maybe next time!

My favourite of the show was a plum convertible with the nicest flame job I've seen in a long while that came all the way from Las Vagas. She took home quite a bit of hardware.

Saturday afternoon we braved the drizzle to explore Watkins Glen. We hit the local souvenir shops - including a large one filled just with NASCAR stuff. Took Darryl a looooong time to decide what he wanted! He finally settled on a special edition IRL hat (of course, it would be a hat - was just a matter of WHICH hat!). I picked up a hat pin to commemorate our visit on my PT cap.

We also went to the Watkins Glen state park, which I'm told is a must to see if you're ever in the area - true even in the rain! I did take a chance with the camera to snap a few photos there. I figured it was worth it! Unfortunately, I'm now having trouble with loading photos so will try to add some from the park later. We didn't walk too far into the gorge as my sandle broke and it was pretty trecherous hiking on the wet rocks let alone doing it with a broken shoe, so we came back down and hit Wal-mart for a new pair of shoes for me.

Saturday night was the banquet and auction at the clubhouse at the track. Dinner was amazing and we stuffed ourselves silly. Didn't quite drink enough to actually bid on anything at the auction although there were a couple of nice items. We called it a night early and headed back to the hotel in Corning, which was about a 20 minute drive further south for us.

Sunday morning I was up rediculously early and already showered before Darryl surfaced. We packed up the car and headed to Bob Evans for breakfast. That is my only hard and fast rule when in the US...at some point, I MUST eat at a Bob Evans restaurant!! This was only Darryl's second time at one but he's as addicted as I am (what do they put in the sausages to make them sooooo addictive???)
At 10am we were at the Winner's Circle (an Ice Cream place near the track) to meet up with fellow PTers who were heading to the "Lunch & Laps" at the race track. At 11, about 100 cars caravaned to the Nascar track. Again, I have lots of photos and videos, but not able to upload them for some reason. :o(

From 12-1, we watched cars racing on the track and at 1 we finally had our turn. We did 3 laps with a pace car. I think the fastest we got going was maybe 80 mph (frankly, driving on the 401 is more nerve-wracking/exciting at times!). We stopped in 3 lines for a photo op at the start/finish line, then headed off the track to the clubhouse for an amazing lunch (can't complain about the food at all all weekend). By three we were on the road heading home.

We stopped in Geneva to take some photos of the houses I mentioned earlier and while I was pulled over on the shoulder, a group of PTs heading back to Ontario went by. Once Darryl was done taking his photos, we scrambled to catch up with the others cars and finally did about a half hour later and we drove right through to Fort Erie with them were we stopped for a coffee and a visit before we all went our separate ways. We finally arrived home around 9pm to be greeted by two very happy puppies. It was nice to sleep in my own bed but man did it hurt getting up the next morning knowing I had to go to work.

Gotta make the money to pay for the toys I guess, huh?