Just inside the western border of Kansas lies the village of Goodland, a blip on the interstate whose main claim to fame appeared to be this giant reproduction of one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings on an 80 foot easel. You can see our rig parked behind it in the photos below. Yes it’s a big sucker. The Rotary Club has made a bit of a park around it and you can see John signing the register.
WaKeeney is a tiny freeway town in western Kansas (read: flat) and does not have a lot to recommend it, but it had a stock car track and fortunately the one night we spent there was a Race Night.
So at 7:30 we drove over to the fair grounds, paid our $10 each entry fee, got our two beers for $5 and settled down in the stands to watch the races. This photo below shows the back of the bleachers from the parking lot.
We had a blast! There were three classes of races – stock, hobby and modifieds. The early races usually involved 4 to 7 cars at a time and they raced five laps around the 1.5 mile dirt track. The stock cars were older style Oldsmobiles and Cutlasses from the 1990’s.
My favourite class was the modifieds because they went the fastest and made the most noise (what a caveman I am!), looking like something between the Back to the Future Delorean and a comic book cover. The later races involved a dozen cars or more in races of 15 and 20 laps. The bleachers were on the side of the track with the start and finish lines, and there is nothing like the sound of those cars all bunched up in two rows bumper to bumper, roaring past the start line – enough to make my empty beer can vibrate in my hand! Then a few seconds later, the cloud of gritty dust drifted over us, deliciously tinged with a whiff of nitrous oxide! The races were over at 10 pm so we went back to the RV and had showers to wash off the grit before heading for bed.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:12 pm Cavewoman. And you picked a great sidekick in John:)
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 pm Ha, ha … the only cars in sight were on the track! All the ‘good ‘ol boyz’ drove pick-ups to the show.