After we left Charleston, SC we spent five days in the parking lot at the Freightliner shop in Gaffney, SC. That really isn’t as bad as it sounds. They have electrical hook ups for 20 or so motor coaches as they wait for service. We couldn’t get a designated appointment time for when we would be in the area (they book about a year ahead of time) so we went in as a “walk in” and had to wait for mechanics to get the appointments done before they could do our work. It doesn’t help that we are so long that we take up two bays of the garage so we have to wait until there is room for us in addition to a mechanic being available.
The Freightliner facility is next door to a technical college campus which made for some nice walking, we managed to get in a couple of miles each day.
I love Gaffney’s water tower. South Carolina actually leads Georgia in peach production. Gaffney is the “capital” of peaches. We did get some delicious peaches while we were there. We were eating them fresh a couple of times a day and I had to do a little cooking frenzy when they all started getting too ripe all at once. I fixed a couple of peach upside down cakes (one is in the freezer) and the rest went into peach sauce which is great on our morning cereal and yogurt.
When we left Charleston we ran into some stormy weather, really the first bad driving weather we have had since we left Arizona in mid-April. On Friday we pulled into the campground at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. This is a nice quiet reasonably priced place to stay, we’ve been here at least a couple of times before.
On Saturday I woke up to what sounded like a train coming through the campground. When I got into the living room Greg was watching what looked like miles of hot rods coming right by the campground into the parking lot outside of the John Force grandstands he said, “Something is happening”. Yes it was, we just didn’t know what.
A little internet search revealed that Saturday was the kickoff day for the 2019 Hot Rod Power Tour. This is the 25th year for the seven day, seven city journey for the world’s largest traveling car show. This year they expect to bring together 6,000 vehicles and over 100,000 spectators. In seven days they cover over 1300 miles. The vehicles that make the entire trip are part of the “Long Haul Gang”. Last year 4,000 vehicles made it. Considering the age and condition of some of the vehicles that is pretty amazing. At each stop they will have locals that will bring in their vehicles just for the day. This year the kick off was here in Charlotte, NC where they ended up last year. They will finish this year at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, OH where they finished 25 years ago on the inaugural tour. The really good thing was that admission was free, at least here!
You could find all kinds of cars from classic to the one you would drive to work every day.
Imagine the attention I could get driving this around the campground. David Snider, check out those pipes!
Since we drive a Jeep this display was of interest. I’m not sure we need that.
This was my favorite!
This is what is pulling it.
Cars were parked for as far as you could see.
This one was from Indiana – I think maybe a Purdue fan. No one was around so we didn’t find out any more about it.
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