Day 16 – Bristol

After a good night’s sleep in the tent I was up about 7.30am as the sun was coming up over the tree line and headed off for a shower.

There is a shower block at the campground with about 15 showers in it. There was no queue so I was straight in and cleaned up and then went to get some breakfast. I did not have milk for my cereal so I ate at the campsite food outlet. I got a Fuel Up breakfast; it included sausage, scrambled eggs, bread roll and gravy. Although it was filling I will make sure I get some milk for tomorrow morning.

I went back to my tent and cleaned up everything before jumping in the car to go into Bristol to check out the party day celebrations. The campground is starting to fill up but I am sure there are a lot more people still to turn up.

As there is no racing today the city closes its main street and puts on a festival. It was $6 entry and there were a lot of stalls setting up and displays of cars from different eras. It had not really got going whilst I was there although I did get some giveaways and a brochure of the event. I could also come back using the same ticket if I wanted.

Bristol It self straddles the state boarder between Tennessee and Virginia and as you can see in the photo below the main street is the border and there are markers along the middle of the road.

These are some of the photos I took as I walked through the festival. Don't forget you can double click on the photos to make them full size.

 This car was the Bristol Speedway Champion in 1962. It has a For Sale sign on it and you can buy it for $7.500 or Best Offer.

I left the area and drove off heading for the interstate highway thinking I would go for a drive to see some of the area. I had only driven a short while when I noticed a large shopping precinct and pulled off the freeway to check out the shops. I am desperate for some CD’s to play in the car as there is not much to listen to on the radio. If you find a decent channel in 15 minutes time it will fade out due to all the mountains in the area.

There was a Target store in the complex and I was able to buy a couple of CD’s to listen to. Next door was a book shop so I looked through the books and bought a book on Nascar racing, it is about one of the early promoters of the series and looks as though it will be a good read. They had WiFi available but you had to join their book club to get it and the book club was $20 for 12 months. It would have been o.k. if you were local but no good for me. I spoke with the man about it and he told me that I could go to a Starbucks Coffee shop and get free WiFi. So I will have to check that out.

By now it was about 2pm and really hot outside, I was a bit weary so I saw a large parkland and drove into it and parked under a bunch of trees and there was a reasonable breeze so I laid back the seat a bit and had a quick nap in the cooling shade.

After that I started back towards Bristol and saw a Starbuck’s so I drove in and was able to hook up to their WiFi. I grabbed a chocolate smoothie to drink and sat at the computer writing up some blog and getting all my photos loaded onto the computer. I hope to be able to put some of them onto the blog pages soon.

I spent in total 3 hours in the Starbucks and then went to Walmart to glad some milk and soft drink. I also bought a ham salad bread roll for dinner and a yogurt for desert. I was going to head back to the campsite to eat but along the way as I re-entered Bristol I saw a lot of people sitting along the roadside and remembered they have a Nascar Transporter parade in Bristol tonight. All the team’s transporters parade through the city and then make their way out to the race track.

It was about 8pm and the parade was at 9pm so I pulled up in a car park sat and ate my roll and desert and waited with all the other people for the show.

Right at 9pm there was some fireworks in the distance, they were at the start point for the parade and it was not long before the police cars with lights flashing were coming down the road. They were followed by some sponsors cars and some modified vehicles then a group of motorcycles and then the Transporters.

It was a good spectacle and there would have been thousands watching all the way from the city out to the racetrack.
I waited about 20 minutes for the traffic to get moving but it still took me an hour to get back to the campground with all the traffic. It is a 15 minute trip normally. Once back at the campground I backed the car into its spot and was in the tent straight away, there was a lot of noise in the campground but even with that I was asleep within a few minutes.