Friday,Sep 4 2009, 03:19:23 AM2009 Corvette Caravan

8/29/2009 It's 5am and My father and I are up and packing the Corvette for our 10 day trip to Bowling Green KY.

Today we will be traveling to Carlisle PA to the Corvettes at Carlise show. The NJ Caravan will be meeting us there on Sunday morning. The NJ group has three starting points, Mt. Laurel in South Jersey, Bridgewater in North Jersey and Carlise PA. We are going to Carlisle to setup the Hospitality tent provided by Lance Miller of Carlisle Productions. Here we will have a check in for all the NJ Caravan members. Of course there will be lots of photos posted of each day.

8/29/09 10pm We were invited back to the Carr's home for a BBQ after a long wet day at the Carlisle fair grounds. Ribs, chicken, meatballs and steak was the menu...one hell of a spread! We will be meeting at 7am to start setting up the hospitality tent for the NJ caravan as they arrive. The Caravan is to arive between 10:30-11:00am. Pictures are posted from Carlisle and the BBQ.

8/30/09 8:30 We started our morning at 7am. The Nortern NJ group arrived in Carlisle at 11:00am and the southern group arrived at 10:30. We had registration at the hospitality tent from 10-12. Goody bags were handed out that included a NJ Caravan dash plaque, bottled water and lots of snack bars and cookies. The Sponsor banners were on display for all the participants to view and sign. During the drivers meeting Laura from American Collectors insurace spoke to the group and wished us a fun and safe trip. Lori from Mid America spoke to the group about the lunch, facility tour and museum we will be visiting on Sunday.

We left Carlisle at 2pm and had a beautiful drive through the PA mountains. We arrived here in New Stanton and 5pm. Everyone is out at the local restaurants enjoying dinner and a cool drink.

Pictures for Day 2 have been posted. We will start out for the Florence IN at 8am in the morning.

8/31/09 10:50pm We started our moring with a drivers meeting, some door prize give aways and were on the road at 8:30. I was rather chilly in the morning (47) and not may of us were prepared for the cold mornings, so for our first rest stop we stopped at Cabella's and bought sweatshirts. In the mountains the leaves are already starting to show signs of fall. We ate lunch as a group at Cracker Barrel, which got us all servered and out within an hour!

We arrived at the Belterra Hotel, spa and Casino at 4:30. All of us arrived together and so far we have been able to stay as one LARGE line of Vettes the whole trip. Jeff  "Zippity" took video at multiple times along the trip so we will be working on getting that available for viewing tomorrow. We all had a nice dinner here in the hotel and spent our free $10 vouchers in the Casino. We are now joined with NY, New England, PA, Canada and NewZeland. Looking out into the parking lot , I would say we are 500+ strong right now with more still to join us.

The Captains and crews are heading to the track early (7am) to make sure everything is ready and then we will be back at the Hotel to provide drivers instructions to the whole group at 8:30am. There are many of the ladies that will be spending the day tomorrow in the spa and shopping here in the resort.

I have posted some of the pictures from the day under 2009 Corvette Caravan Day3

09/01/09 4:48pm The NJ Co-Captain and crew left for the Motorsport Park to get ready for the groups arrival and to take practice laps on the track. Six of our drivers from the NJ, PA and NE caravans were to be pace cars for the day’s events. The track was still under construction and we were the first large group to use the track. The owners were there to great us and notified us that due to the track not being a completed product, there would be no charge for the days racing!  All the cars started to arrive around 8:30. We organized everyone and started laps around 9:30am. We had one pace car leading thirteen cars and a pace car in the back. Everyone had at least 2 track sessions of four laps each before noon. Some of the drivers went back to the hotel at noon and others stayed until 3pm.

We are all now back at the  Hotel getting cleaned up for this evenings party in the Grand Ball Room. Attending this party will be NJ, PA, NY, DE, MD, MA, ME, RI, CT, NH, VT, Canada, New Zealand, and Austrailia Caravaner's.

Pictures are posted from today and I will be posting more tomorrow of the party.

Track Movie can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_peSBEh01H8

09/02/09 8am We got on the road at 10am and traveled south on Rt65 into Elizabethtown for lunch. The three carvan's broke up and went to the many restaurants. We started to pull out restaurant by restaurant at 1:30. At this point, we were one hour away from the museum. Our arrival time was to be 2pm and with the time change after lunch, we arrive right on time. The rain started to come down very hard 5min out and we all had to stop on the shoulder and get our tops back up. We arrived at Corvette drive where we paraded around the GM plant and then around the circle in front of the museum. We were greated by all the Corvette Museum staff waving and cheering as we were the first caravan to arrive. We parked and took a tour of the beautiful new museum, checked in for the 15th anniversary celebration and went to check into our hotels.

09/02/09  7pm two of the NJ clubs, Original Garden State and Lakes went to a very nice restaurant and had a great meal at Miarah's.

09/03/09 7am It's still raining. We all have GM plant tours this morning and will be going back to the museum.

09/03/09 11:15pm The GM plant our was amazing. They allowed us to take self guided tours which for me was 2 hours. The line workers were very friendly and would answer any questions we had between cars. There were 1200+ people pre-registered for todays tours. The club got together in the parking lot (lot lizzards) of the Belmont and partied, meet new people from all over the country and had a great time.

09/04/09 11:00pm Today was a free day to do what we wanted. Groups split off and went to Makers Mark, some of the different cave sites, did plant tours snd went to the museum. This evening was the BBQ for the NJ caravan members at the Baymont. Southern style food was catered and everyone had a great time. The many different clubs took pictures with the sponsor banners and we got a group photo with everyone. As I write this, the party is still going... 

09/05/09 10:30pm Today was a free day. Some went to the Grand Ole Opry, others stayed ad went to the seminars and my father and I drove into Georgia to see Ruby Falls and Rock City.

09/06/09 6:28pm We arrived in Effingham at 12:30. A very nice lunch was provided by Mid America Motorworks. They gave us a tour of the sales floor, manufacturing, and opened the store and museum to us. Thanks Mike!

09/09/09 Everyone is home safe. The last two days we drove almost 800 miles. Just before the Carlise exit on the PA turnpike, we all said good bye to our Northern Jersey, Maryland, New York folks and headed back to South Jersey.