Got home last night around 5 from the 11th GT Family Reunion. Salute' to DBK and the Texas hooligans that put this event together.
Remembering Rally 1, it was all about the cars. Remembering Rally 11, it was all about the gals ands guys who were there. Car talk seemed to be limited the GT race program and of course the black hole of info on the new GT. It was all good to be able to visit and spend quality time with many so long time friends, meet (and re-meet) new friends, and sharing more than a few cocktails until late in the night.
My road trip was about 2400 miles in 4 days. 10 tanks of gasoline, luckily got the last motel room within 100 miles 2 nights in a row, hit a misplaced orange road barrel at speed in Utah (no damage), and over 1,000 miles of rain driving..West Texas, mostly wet and cloudy in all of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. Fortunately, I missed by a couple of hours and a few miles, two devastating tornado's in Texas and Utah. As usual, it's better to be real lucky than real good.
And the final 4 hours yesterday were sunny (at last) while driving on mostly twisty 2 lane highways in eastern Washington hill country. And the first topper of the day was driving 70 miles up the Naches River canyon. 70 miles of 2 lane very curvy roads, with 3,000' of elevation change….and not one car, truck, motorhome in the way for the whole time. I have never experienced no traffic on that road in 40 years of driving that highway. With normal traffic that's usually a 1.5 to 2 hour slog with very few turn outs along the way. With a "leisurely" but rapid pace I made it to the summit of Chinook Pass in an hour! And the next hour was spent driving through the north side of Mt. Rainier National Park. 100% 2 lane, 35 mph roads ( built by my grandfather and his buddies in the WPA in the 1930's) through the un-molested national forest, on the north side of the mountain. Again with No traffic for another 50 miles. Windows down, cool moist air,beautiful scenery, saw a few deer grazing in a meadow and one huge elk standing in one the many creeks along the way.
A truly wonderful and stress free final day.