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 

Road Trip- Day Five

We woke up on a warm, humid and sunny Saturday morning on August 17th.  Our first activity of the day was going to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.  The day was getting hot so we got there in late morning. 

We saw an exhibit by Zhang Huan, that had sculptures and photographs and paintings that were created with ash on linen.  Check out some of his ash on linen paintings.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any photos.

We started in the greenhouse-type rooms with all the arid climate cacti and succulents.  

Once outside again, we saw there was a lot of ground to cover so we thought we'd pay $3 each to take the tram.  Big mistake.  It ended up taking longer and we didn't get as many good views of some the sculptures than we would have if we were on foot, which we ended up walking back to some of them anyways. 

We went into downtown Grand Rapids after the garden to Founders Brewing Company.  Founders is M's favorite brewery.  The building had a lot of construction going on when we got there as they are expanding at a crazy rate and it was very busy when we showed up around 2 pm.    

We found a great spot at a table on the patio but we were called up to do the tour, which we thought started at 3 pm.  This is a kind of a long back story but it shows you another case of what a small world it is.  

Remember our friends Chris and Tanya?  If you read my blog, you know them.  Well, Tanya's mom Donna is engaged to Mike.  Mike's son Nate works at Founders.  We've never met Mike or Nate but Nate used to be a brewer at a brewery in Wisconsin.  When we told Chris and Tanya months ago that we had this trip planned, they gave us Nate's email address to contact him and see if we could hook up with him while we were there as well as ask him if he wanted us to bring him any MN beer since M ended up getting a bottle of Doom from Nate/his dad when he was out there visiting.  M and him emailed back and forth a bit and M brought him some Surly on this visit and to have a chance to meet him.  

We went on the tour, which was pretty standard as far as brewery tours go and then at the end of the tour, our tour guide Gabe grabbed Nate, who was working, and brought him to us to meet.  He came out to the car with us to get his Surly beer and we chatted for awhile.  He's worked there since November 2012 but he worked at Thirsty Pagan in Superior, WI before that.  I asked him if he knew my cousin and her husband, Laura and Chris as I knew they knew people from that brewery. He did and he said that he donated a keg to my aunt's benefit in March 2012. (Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and M is cleaning out the "junk drawer" in the kitchen and finds a post-it note that says "Thirsty Pagan- Nate" and a phone number on it.  M had talked to him on the phone two years ago about setting up a tour.)  So, Laura and Chris, your friend Nate is going to be my friend Tanya's step brother. Small world, huh? 

After the tour, we found another spot in the building to order some beer and food.  I had a pounding headache so I only drank water except for a couple of sips of a beer I hadn't tried before.  I ordered a sandwich and M ordered a pizza and both were incredibly delicious.  

We stayed here for hours, much later than we thought we would and what we should have according to our time schedule and we we had to be for the rest of the day but we were having a good time.  The taproom manager sat down and talked to us at our table for a half hour, knowing our "relationship" to Nate.  He left the table and came back with a bottle wrapped up in paper for M.  It was a gift of a bottle of KBS.  Very nice gift if you know your beer.

We left Grand Rapids and headed south 50 miles to Kalamazoo, MI.  Once we got to Kalamazoo, you could tell we were rolling through the hood and we didn't see a single white person for a very long time, until we got into the downtown area.  Nothing to be concerned with and I'm writing it here so I can remember going through the not-so-great-neighborhood. 

Our next brewery was destination, Bell's Brewery and the Eccentric Cafe.  One of the first signs I saw on the wall was for Fitger's.  M got a flight while I sipped a little from them.  I saw someone with an awesome salad so even though I had just eaten several hours ago, I had to get that salad.  We had a good time on the inside but didn't even realize there was a whole patio/outdoor area until we were leaving otherwise we would have hung out there instead.  

We walked to a place that our server from Smokey Bones on Friday night told us about.  It's called Kalamazoo Beer Exchange and it has a similar concept to the stock exchange.  They have 15 minute trading periods where there is a price set for a beer.  If that beer gets ordered a lot during the 15 minutes, the price is going to go up.  If it doesn't get ordered as much, the price will go down.  Supply and demand, baby.  M saw a beer that was priced pretty low and decided to wait it out after the 15 minute trading period.  After the time was up, the price went up 50 cents so he missed out.  He still bought the beer though.  

It was already dark by the time we left Kalamazoo and we still had some driving ahead of us and one more brewery on our beer tour.  We drove to a little town called Marshall, MI, 35 miles away which has around 7,000 people to go to Dark Horse Brewing. It was already 10:30 pm by the time we got there but they had their Chicken Wing Thing festival going on so it was plenty busy.  Instead of paying $10 to go on the lot and listen to bands, we went into their little shack bar and sat at the bar and had a quick beer sitting underneath all the steins they have hanging from the ceiling. 

We drove another 30 miles east to Jackson, MI, where our hotel was.  Problem was, we showed up too late and they gave our hotel away to one of their high-end members.  Instead, they put us up in a comparable hotel just a block away and paid for it.  I'll take a free hotel room for the slightest bit of inconvenience. We drove down the street, checked in and settled into bed after midnight with another big day ahead of us.