June 8 - 10, 2010
A couple of years ago, we visited the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. We enjoyed it so much that this year we stopped by again on our way to the Eldora Speedway. The museum is located in the company showroom of the original administration building of the Auburn Automobile Company. The cars are fabulous, and the building itself is a museum piece...period correct and original in every detail. You can see more info at their website: http://www.automobilemuseum.org/.
We left home real early to avoid the Chicago rush-hour traffic and stopped in beautiful downtown Valparaiso, Indiana for the first round of biscuits and gravy at Bob Evans. We'll spare you the details and photographs, because it wasn't a pretty sight!We spent the night in Ft. Wayne, then headed out the next morning for Rossburg, Ohio to join 22,000 people, in the middle of a corn field, on a Wednesday night. NASCAR driver Tony Stewart bought the historic Eldora Speedway several years ago and stages the "Prelude to the Dream" charity race each summer. The race is on the 1/2-mile dirt track, in something called "late models", driven by many favorite NASCAR drivers. And they look like they're having a blast! Why is it called "Prelude to the Dream?" It's actually the lead-in to a mega-dirt track racing weekend called "Dream Week".
At what other sporting event can you buy burgers for a couple of bucks, and beer for the same price (unless you buy them by the six-pack, in which case they're cheaper)? And at what other sporting event can you get dirtier than a four-year-old in a mud puddle? We've gone three years in a row, and it's really a great time. The closest hotel is about 35 miles away, so most people just camp out on the grounds. It was a relief to get back to the hotel (at about 1:00 a.m.) and make mud pies in the shower! Then in the morning...back to the gravy trough! You can see more about Eldora at http://www.eldoraspeedway.com/.
