Corvette 50th

Australian Corvette Caravan to the U.S. for the Corvette 50th.

Part 2

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By James Pierce - (Australian Corvette Captain)

Greetings dear readers, gather round and I will regale you with tales of our intrepid crew's (Bealy, G'night John boy Smith, George Dubbelyew and Cap'n James) journey.
When we left them last month, the caravan had just departed from the Fontana Speedway with the Goodyear Blimp floating overhead.
All the Corvettes had precedence at every departure point so we had to wait until they had all departed before hitting the road. This caused 2 problems...
The first was if there were police escorting us out of a stop they would not recognize our vehicles as part of the caravan. We would regularly get stopped instead of being let through and then we would have to play a game of high speed catch up. The second was at each of the stops we would arrive last, meaning last in line for food, fuel and entertainments.

Bealy, John, and George had organized rides in Vettes for the first part of the trip so I was left alone in the Dodge Caravan with my cameras and my tunes. Gotta have driving music!
I followed the map in the route book north towards Las Vegas along I-15. Unfortunately the route book forgot a "small" turn onto I-40 to head east and towards Bowling Green.
Some of the Aussies and probably some of the Americans missed the turn onto I-40 and headed blindly on towards Vegas. Phone calls and U turns prevailed and they were eventually on the right track.

Part of the first day's route was to exit I-40 to travel along a section of old Route 66.
I took this exit and found myself behind a 2003 model which had been modified to look like a '53 Vette.

I like to call these Vettes 53'03's and there were several on the caravan. I managed to get several photos and a fair bit of Video of the rear of this unusual Vette along the section of route 66.
Road markers in the form of "Historic Route 66" shields were painted on the road every couple of miles. I tried to get a pic of the 53'03 crossing over one of these but all I got was "bridge ahead". Hard to do when you are driver, navigator photographer, videographer and entertainment officer.

Lunch was at the Powerhouse Visitor Center in Kingman AZ with Mr D's diner across the road. Strangely enough, there was a Route 66 store inside the visitor centre and many displays of Route 66 memorabilia.
One new shirt, a belt buckle and a lapel pin later I hit the road again to head into Flagstaff AZ for our first night's stop.
The Caravan's official stop was the Days Inn and this was where the reception was held. Drinks and food were on hand and thank goodness for air conditioning!
We had left LA with it overcast and temperatures in the 60-70F range. Once we got out into the desert climes it went to clear skies and 90 odd degrees. Ah, Summer!
After a few social brewskis a couple of the Australian contingent got talking and realized the Grand Canyon was only an hour away. They approached me, as leader, and suggested we divert to the canyon as none of them had seen it. I reminded them we had a full days driving and events to attend but they were adamant they wanted to see it, seeing they were this close, and some of them would not get another chance. I relented as we had a majority vote for the side excursion but made a point that we had to leave early.
There had also been fires in the area so we enquired with the parks service to make sure we could get to the rim. Mark Graf , who had given a ride to Bealy during the day decided to join us as he had not seen the "big hole" (as we like to call it). Mark was driving his Z06 406 Hp fixed head Coupe and offered to take me along for the day.
We retired to our Best Western for the night and set the alarms for an early rise.

After breakfast and a quick meeting/briefing we returned to the Days Inn to drop off a couple of the Aussies who had already seen the "big hole" and watch the departure of the caravan.
John Smith was one of the group which caught another ride for the day and participated in the official activities.
I informed Hib Halverson, the caravan captain, that we were diverting and we would catch up that evening. A bit of roundy, roundy where is everyone? and we were off!

The road to the Grand Canyon is well maintained as there is obviously a lot of traffic and we maintained a speed of 75 mph in a 65 zone. Let me explain...
On a freeway, most are signed at 65 or 75 mph. The average speed on a freeway is always 10 mph higher and usually the traffic travels faster (LA freeways are the exception to the rule). At some points we were traveling at 90mph and only keeping up with the traffic.
The traffic keeps to the right unless overtaking so there is a clear lane for those who wish to travel faster than the rest. If there is an accident the police, highway patrol, county sheriff or whoever quickly set up flares and a long diversion lane to create a safe working area for the rescue and clean up workers.
In the 8000 miles we covered in the month we were in the US there were only 2 or three "incidents" that we saw which could have caused a situation. Unfortunately, we probably caused more havoc with our driving on the wrong side of the road in the first week. Back to the trip!

For those who have seen the Grand Canyon, you know it is impossible to describe. We just kept making jokes about getting the contract to fill it with concrete! We visited the south rim and spent an hour and half wandering along the rim and at the visitor's center.

A head count and we reboarded our transport to head back to Flagstaff. Somehow we got separated and eventually we all got back to our starting point for the day where we had a quick lunch and refueled for the eight hours driving ahead of us. We left in convoy from Flagstaff to get to Tucumcari for the next nights rest. It is amazing that when everyone agrees on a speed we will maintain how quickly we got separated. There were phone calls back and forth and eventually most of the group arrived in Tucumcari NM about 10.30 that night.
We had missed the barbeque lunch at Galles Chevrolet in Albuquerque for lunch but we didn't know how much we would appreciate this until later.

A bit about the phone I bought. It was a prepaid plan with AT&T. It was cheap in LA and when you got into an area serviced by AT&T with the phone system I was using. Any other time you would log onto a competitors network and be charged extra for "roaming".
There were a lot of times when I had no service at all. Oh and you were charged for receiving calls as well as making them. At one point I made a call to Australia and the rate was 10 times that of a local call. You can take an Australian phone over to the US if it is Tri-band but the call rate is something like $2.50 per minute on the best plan and if anyone wants to call you then they have to call Australia and then you pay for the diversion back to the US.

If anyone wants to borrow my US cell phone they are most welcome as it does not work here.
And I used to complain about Telstra and Optus! By using a Phone card you can get around the high costs involved but they require dialing into a 1800 number, entering a code and the number you want to dial before you are connected.

The official events had finished for the evening so we lobbed at a drive-in Diner on foot across the road from our motel. It was a Sonic or something similar and the burgers were pretty ordinary.
As we were sitting there, a police car pulled over a full size somethingorother in front of us and proceeded to do all the licence checks on the driver.
When they let the driver go, A.J. from South Australia approached the police and asked for a test drive of the cop car. After a few "what are you on and where are you from"s the cops chilled out and eventually presented our entire group with "Tucumcari junior police officer" stickers as a memento.

The usual early alarm and breakfast before returning to the Tucumcari convention centre for our departure on the next leg of the trip.
I had some photo ops with Hib and Paul, the So Cal Caravan captains, in front of the convention centre before the departure to Amarillo.

We were meeting the north Texas Caravan at the Travel Center in the centre of Amarillo and quickly moved on towards Elk City OK.
In the short stop in Amarillo the local Corvette club gave out fuel discount vouchers with a lapel pin with a pair of boots on them.
One of the last towns before entering OK is Shamrock TX. It has the reputation as the speed trap capital of the US.
The Route book had a special warning in it regarding this town and do not speed for 5 miles either side of it or you will be booked - sort of a little Victoria.

Along I-40 there is a sign saying the biggest cross in the northern hemisphere is just a bit further down the road. Yes, it is a big cross and I have a picture of it to prove it. And yes, we were in the Bible belt.

Elk City, surprise surprise, had a route 66 museum just across the road from the park where the lunch stop was. The local Chevy dealer and the city Chamber of Commerce provided a barbeque lunch comprising of a bun with shredded beef, bright yellow potato salad, coleslaw and beans. This was to become our staple diet for the next few days.

The museum had displays of several corvettes but also included the grapes of wrath and similar stories of the dustbowl migration to California.
We were overnighting in Oklahoma City and our host for the events there were City Chevrolet.
They cleared out their used and new parking lots to make way for the 300+ Corvettes which were about to descend on them. They also provided a meal for us (barbeque-see above) which filled us up before a tour of the Oklahoma City Memorial.

The memorial is to the bombing which occurred in 1993.
A city building which housed federal offices as well as a crèche for the worker's children was destroyed by a bomb left in a van out the front of the building. The site has been cleared and a reflection pool replaces the building.

The pool sits between two walls which have the numbers 9.01 and 9.03 engraved on them.
The bomb went off at 9.02 am. There is a grassy bank with a glass chair for everyone lost in the blast.
These are arranged to reflect which floor the person was on when the explosion took place. The children are represented by child size chairs.
The museum documents the entire day's activities, the search for survivors and the eventual arrest and conviction of Timothy McVey for the bombing.

It is a very moving experience and if you have the chance to visit the Museum and Memorial I fully recommend it.

More to follow...

Stay Tuned Folks...

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