I've been away, but I'm BACK. Door to door was 2,999 miles of smiles (except for the 90+ minute construction delay going East on US 50 from Montrose, and then the rain I hit about 80 miles South of Denver on my way to Boulder. Had an excellent time at the Shelby American Museum.
Steve Volk, THE MAN, took great care of me. I got to meet Alan Grant and a few other ex-Shelby employees, Pat Bondurant (Bob's Widow), as well as a bunch of the museum workers and volunteers. Also good to see Ken Walker from the Texas Cobra Club, sans Cobra. I enjoyed the Friday night meal, provided by the museum, the Saturday afternoon car show, the Saturday night banquet for the show participants, had breakfast Sunday with The Shelby and Museum folks and then a restricted tour of Stephen Tebo's HUGE automobile collection. All this Shelby stuff was thanks to
TommyRot (Alfa02) in Washington. He is the person that coerced me to go. All started off with a bunch of the folks from Washing going and then they started dropping like flies and finally, NONE showed. He somehow got Steve to show me the red carpet and boy, did he! I totally enjoyed myself. The Monday after the Shelby stuff, I took off. Stayed in Lead, SD which is just a few miles outside of Deadwood. Looked around Deadwood and Sturgis (didn't loose anything there). Went to the Devil's Tower in WY before heading homeward. Stayed overnight in Cheyenne. Lovely town....NOT. Decided to break away from my "NO FREEWAY" routing and took interstates to Montrose. Gotta say, that was a magnificent drive. Took me down through Vail and lots of gorgeous, high elevation scenery! Didn't have the tight twisty turnies but plenty of wide sweeping, high speed turns. From Montrose, I went back to the non-expressway routing down through Silverton and on to Durango. More drop dead gorgeous scenery, with some "interesting" curves. Went on to Gallup, for the evening. (Yes, I do pick the most wonderful places to overnight!) Then it was only another 350+- miles to Casa Bebout. I arrived at 12:30pm Friday with gazillions of murdered bugs on #2119. Car ran great. Not a hitch. My engine is approaching 90,000 miles and does like to spew some
oil blow-by during spirited driving, but I think I'll wait to hit 100,000 before rebuilding to little girl.
Really the only disappointing part of the trip was the extraordinary high temperatures but, still a whole lot better than rain or snow. Overall, a great trip and I'm glad it I did it. Gotsta do this stuff before I get OLD!