Road Trip- Day Six Final Day

We woke up later than we wanted to on Sunday, August 18th but it turned out it didn't make a difference. We got ready quickly, ate some quick breakfast at the hotel and headed another almost 30 miles southeast to Brooklyn, MI where we would spend the entire afternoon at Michigan International Speedway for a NASCAR race.

Here's the back story on our history with NASCAR.  There really isn't one.  I used to watch NASCAR with my dad when I was younger but that didn't last more than a year or two and that was a really long time ago. M has never liked NASCAR.  That is, until this year.  M's coworker had a fantasy NASCAR league and we both joined just for fun.  We didn't know anything about the sport when we started.  Since the debut of the season last February at Daytona, we've watched every single race since.  It's a long season spanning from February to November so that's a lot of races.  I would definitely say we enjoy watching it but I'm unsure if I'd watch if I wasn't in the league.  I guess that doesn't matter since I plan on signing up for the league again next year. :)

When we planned this trip, I thought, hey, I wonder where the race will be that weekend?  Turns out it was about 2 hours from where we were going to be.  Kinda NASCAR fate if you ask me.  We ended up manipulating our trip by adding on a day and heading further east than we had planned to accommodate seeing the race. I didn't know this at the time but the race is held in an area of Michigan called the Irish Hills. We didn't get to experience the area except for the race but the surroundings look beautiful.

We got to the race with very minimal issues with parking.  I didn't think that would happen since the speedway holds 85,000 people.  We parked in our spot and we tried very hard to remember where we were parked in a sea of cars.  I don't have the yellow car anymore which was easy to spot so I actually have to remember where I park.  We saw quite a few Ontario, Canada license plates.  Canada is only about 1.5 hours away from where were at.

I don't own anything NASCAR so I went with the best I could do.  I wore a Miller Lite hat that I got from the fair years ago.  I've never worn it and I actually gave it to my dad as a hat when he had chemo but he never ended up losing any of his hair.  M bought a Michigan International Speedway hat to blend in a bit for the day. We saw probably every single stereotype when it comes to what you think of in terms of NASCAR fans.

They let you bring in our own food and beverage and M was going to drink a beer on the way to the entrance.  He had a bottle and realized he didn't have an opener so he went over to a group of people tailgating and asked if they had an opener, realizing that everyone he spotted had cans. One of the guys did have an opener for him but another one of the guys muddled under his breath with his head down, "Must be a pretty fancy beer if you need an opener for it."  Ah, one of the highlights of the day.

Our seats were pretty good.  With NASCAR, the higher up you are, the more expensive the seats are. We were in the center section that had 54 rows and we were in row 25.  Our seats were facing the pit and towards the end of it.

There are pre-race activities that take place such as an introduction of all the drivers, Richard Petty coming out on the stage, the drivers being driven around the track in the back of a truck like a parade to wave to the fans, the National Anthem, and the famous words, "Drivers, start your engines".  It used to be where they would say, "Gentlemen, start your engines" but with Danica Patrick as a driver, you can't say that anymore. It's always different when they say it with some people saying Drivers and others saying Lady and Gentlemen.  This year, the grand marshal's, actress Amy Smart and her husband from HGTV Carter Oosterhouse said, "Gentlemen and one fine lady, start your engines."  The pace car was driven by country music artist Luke Bryan.

A flyover after the anthem.

We were a little concerned about our ears and how loud it was going to be but we didn't see anyone else with protective ear gear so we didn't worry about it.  Once the race started, holy wow, it was loud.  I looked around and then saw at least half of the people with ear protection.  It was hard to talk to M during the race it was so loud and finally after about 50 laps, M went and got us earplugs.  They didn't do much but they helped.

We didn't have many cautions during the race.  A spin out here and there and someone hitting the wall, but not much in terms of real crashes.

Photos are really hard to get at the race.  Michigan International Speedway is currently the fastest track in NASCAR.  The cars on this track exceed 200 mph.

I got a lot of photos like this. 

And this one.

This one too.  The cars are just so fast you can't catch them.

My favorite driver, #56 Martin Truex, Jr.

Cute, little redneck couple

Oops

You could really hear the sounds in the pit of the air gun on the lug nuts

Oops

The view from the top of our section

Winner, Joey Logano during burnouts after his win

One of my favorites of the day; the shirtless cowboy.

Yee Haw!!!!

We left the race at 4:30 pm EST with the thought that it would take us 2 hours to get out of the traffic. The cops had the streets and traffic running so smoothly that we got out right away and was on our way home. We didn't have a hotel anywhere and we decided that we would drive as far as we could and find a place when we got tired.  We drove into Indiana and pretty much rode the state line until south of Chicago.  We were surprised when we got to a tollway in Indiana and it came to $8!  Just for riding along the state line. On our way, we passed Notre Dame, just north of South Bend.  At some point, we crossed back into Central Standard Time and even though we were still far from home, it feels good to be in your own time zone.  We hit Chicago around sunset and decided to keep going.  

Chicago traffic on a Sunday night

We arrived in Janesville, WI around 10 pm where we stopped at a truck stop for some food.  We headed out around 10:30 pm again and we both decided we wanted to get home tonight so we made that our challenge even though we were still 300 miles from home.  We pulled in our driveway at 3 am and went to bed.

Our trip spanned from August 13th to technically August 19th and we drove 1,400 miles.  I drove the entire trip. My car got awesome gas mileage.  From our house to Madison, we averaged almost 43 mpg.  On the way back, we averaged almost 42 mpg.  We got gas in Indiana and I would have made it home on that tank but I was pushing it so we stopped 35 miles away from home. I didn't really want to chance it at 2:30 am.  

So how about the state license plate game we played the entire time?  We didn't see any new states from the time we left Chicago on Friday until we were on our way home almost into Wisconsin on Sunday.  We were able to get two new states including Alaska on Sunday night.  We ended up with seeing 37 different state license plates and multiple Canadian provinces.  Pretty successful and fun at the same time. 

We had an incredibly awesome time and our trip sparks us to travel more and explore this beautiful country. 

1,400 miles