The great 2016 road trip, part 5
Sep. 5th, 2020 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellDay 11: We set off from Orlando, back up the turnpike to I-75, and stopped in Ocala for the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing, which is really mostly the Museum of Don Garlits.
Then it was back up I-75 for a long, long way up through Georgia, land of a million billboards advertising peaches and/or pecans. We hit the ring roads of Atlanta right around evening rush hour, but were lucky to be going counter-commute most of the way. We stopped for the night somewhere in northern Georgia.
Day 12: We kept on I-75 up into the winding hills until East Ridge, Tennessee, just over the border, where we switched to I-24. We stopped in Chattanooga so the SO could show me the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
The Choo-Choo is a hotel in a converted train station, with the waiting room turned into a huge lobby, the auxilliary buildings filled with rooms, some train cars turned into suites, etc. At the time, it hosted just about every geek convention in Chattanooga except their anime con. The SO had been to one of those cons a couple years before and I'd really wanted to make it to one as well, except soon after the trip word broke that parts of the hotel were being demolished and all the cons were having to move. Oh well.
I bought new batteries for the camera in the gift shop, and we continued on.
I-24 took us to Nashville, where we turned north onto I-65 to Bowling Green. There we stopped at the National Corvette Museum, which is famous among car aficionados for its unparalleled collection. If you're not a car aficionado, then you've heard of it because it's the museum where a sinkhole suddenly opened one night and swallowed the crown jewels of its collection.
The museum has made the best of it, putting in an exhibit on the local geology, the recovery effort, and the decision to leave some of the cars unrepaired. A couple of the most damaged cars are completely unique, the reasoning goes, and if they were rebuilt then they wouldn't be all-original anymore. They're part of history just as they are.
I would think after that that we'd been to every museum in the US mixing cars and geology, but just recently, reading up on DC-area attractions, I learned about Luray Caverns and its associated auto museum.
Then it was back up I-75 for a long, long way up through Georgia, land of a million billboards advertising peaches and/or pecans. We hit the ring roads of Atlanta right around evening rush hour, but were lucky to be going counter-commute most of the way. We stopped for the night somewhere in northern Georgia.
Day 12: We kept on I-75 up into the winding hills until East Ridge, Tennessee, just over the border, where we switched to I-24. We stopped in Chattanooga so the SO could show me the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
The Choo-Choo is a hotel in a converted train station, with the waiting room turned into a huge lobby, the auxilliary buildings filled with rooms, some train cars turned into suites, etc. At the time, it hosted just about every geek convention in Chattanooga except their anime con. The SO had been to one of those cons a couple years before and I'd really wanted to make it to one as well, except soon after the trip word broke that parts of the hotel were being demolished and all the cons were having to move. Oh well.
I bought new batteries for the camera in the gift shop, and we continued on.
I-24 took us to Nashville, where we turned north onto I-65 to Bowling Green. There we stopped at the National Corvette Museum, which is famous among car aficionados for its unparalleled collection. If you're not a car aficionado, then you've heard of it because it's the museum where a sinkhole suddenly opened one night and swallowed the crown jewels of its collection.
The museum has made the best of it, putting in an exhibit on the local geology, the recovery effort, and the decision to leave some of the cars unrepaired. A couple of the most damaged cars are completely unique, the reasoning goes, and if they were rebuilt then they wouldn't be all-original anymore. They're part of history just as they are.
I would think after that that we'd been to every museum in the US mixing cars and geology, but just recently, reading up on DC-area attractions, I learned about Luray Caverns and its associated auto museum.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 02:45 am (UTC)As an Australian, I've done one American road trip (g). We travelled from Denver to Santa Fe - we being me and my two friends in their beloved Jaguar. They have a garage best described as a Jaguar shrine.
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Date: 2020-09-07 03:41 am (UTC)The Corvette Museum has a whole playlist of sinkhole-related videos on YouTube, including this four-minute documentary that includes security video of the event.
That sounds like a really classic road trip.
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Date: 2020-09-07 05:21 am (UTC)Way back when, Dragsters situated the driver *behind* the engine, rather than in front. Go to the Garlits Museum, and one will learn *exactly* why the driver was relocated, in excruciating detail (and I mean that in *both* senses of the term).
Back in 1995 or so, there was a Great Schism in the American Pavement Open-Wheel Racing World, between the "Indy Racing League" (keep costs down; focus on Drivers) and "Championship Auto Racing Teams" (Technology Uber Alles, never mind the costs). The Motorsports Pundits were of one mind: "The IRL will collapse in three years, and Indy will come crawling back to CART". I predicted: "It will take 15 years, but Whoever Controls Indy Controls American Open-Wheel Racing -- so the CART teams will come crawling back to Indy". Guess who turned out to be right? (Sadly, Tony George did not have the courage to blackball everyone with CART connections; so the cancer came back with a vengeance, to where now Indy can barely scrape together 33 drivers for the 500.)
One of the Corvettes destroyed by the NCM sinkhole is a Indy 500 Pace Car from the CART period -- in fact, of the eight Corvettes destroyed, the CART Pace Car was the worst-destroyed of the lot.
I think the reader can guess how this IRL Hard-Liner responded to *that* imagery. >:)