Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Great American Race, Paragould Ar.

Leader of the race with the microphone. Many of you will recognize him.

And his car.
Got up and was getting ready to roll when I got a text from my daughter. They were meeting the cars coming from Cape Girardeau running south on I-55. That is not supposed to happen. Should be on a back road and I thought I had the roads figured out. they will not let you in on the route before they travel. I guess they don't want too many spectators lining the hiways. So, change of plans. There are several good back roads they can head west on. I rolled down 25 waiting at various intersections, knowing I was early. Nothing. On to Kennett where I sat for an hour. Several of the support vehicles were passing by so I thought I had it figured out. After a little while I got anxious and jumped in behind some support vehicles. They were lost and I knew it so I decided to just head on down to Paragould on my own and wait for them.
Downtown Paragould was all blocked off for the big event. A local car show was going on. About 1145 Mr. Coker rolled in. He talked for 30 minutes to the crowd then here came the cars.


A movie car.

This guy is from Searcy, Ar. The crowd went wild when he was announced.

And here they come, about a minute apart. This is not only an endurance race but it is a timed race.

Yep, looked up and this is where I was standing.

And here they keep coming. All were parking on the main street for one hour after arrival.

The town fed the drivers in a large building behind where I was standing to get this shot.

All makes.

The guy standing on the running board is filming for the tv show that will be on Speed or the Travel Channel.

Look at dat, look at dat.

I stayed for the first 25 cars to arrive . They will start leaving at 1:10 pm heading back across the Ms. River at Dyersburg.

On my way out I found the route and met at least 60 of the vehicles coming down 139, a very rural back road running down the west side of the St. Francis River.



Something for everyonefrom 1918 to 1969. There were 89 in all that started the race in Mn. I think a few have died along the way, but not many. Met an older Vdub coming in with the bunch. Every brand you can think of seemed to be in this run. There was even an old fire truck. Would hate to be buying his gas.


One of the support group that passed by me in Kennett.
They will end up in Mobile, Al. in a few days. Today they will park near Memphis on Hiway 51, near The river.
What a day. I had fun. The vdub had fun. Longest run for the old vdub since I have owned it. Was about 175 miles and it never missed a lick. It brought back lots of memories of driving old vehicles back and forth to Paragould, where I lived once, while attending college. I don't want to do a 500 mile day in the vdub but today was ok.
Hope you like seeing the old cars.
Dan

posted by Dan & Teri Gregg @ 1:03 PM

1 Comments:

At June 26, 2013 at 1:20 PM , Blogger carl s said...

Very cool! Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home