Nascar Race

One of the worst things about living somewhere and then moving is having regret about not taking in what was great about where you lived. For instance, in 2010 I finally went to Yellowstone. (Which apparently I never blogged about... ) I had lived in the near vicinity all my life and had never been. I am so glad we created the opportunity to go before we moved south east.

So now that we are here I have this desire to make sure we take in the opportunities about the area we now live as much as we feasibly can. So we won't say years down the road that we just never got around to it. Gary had heard that some Nascar races were going on and given Zurich's excitement over Cars and racing, we thought it would be fun to take Zurich to a race. We were surprised with a bonus and I got home one day and Gary had purchased tickets. I admit I was very nervous about taking everyone to it... I had wild imaginative episodes of how unpleasant and unmanageable it would be. The kids were very excited and kept singing, "We're going to a cars race."

I am happy to report that it really went very well.

We parked in Free parking and took a school bus shuttle to the track. The bus ride was VERY exciting. It was crazy. The kids kept saying,"This is a race car bus." It was a bumpy and g-force packed bus ride. :)

Our seats were in front of the beginning of the pits. This was a great spot to be for having kids. We got lucky and no one sat in the row directly in front of us which provided a better view for the kids.

Zurich was very excited and kept giving me this great cheese face and looking for Lightning McQueen. :)

Pre-race line up

Hard not to be emotional when the forces unfurl a huge flag like that for the national anthem.

It was the Sprint something or other... sorry race fans. It was 160 lap race. And at about 56 laps Zurich was bored. So thanks to the Subway car having breakdowns and pitting over and over with fires right in front of us that helped keep Zurich's interest up. He just needed some explanation of what he was looking at and some understanding of what was going on. And so I kept him close to me so I could re-direct his attention at appropriate intervals.

Nev, laid down ready, when she saw Gary get diapers out to change Giddy. We didn't change Nev there though.

Check out them eyes. yum.

Olea is easily influenced by a crowd. The cars were going fast, and people were excited, that was enough for her. :)

When the race was down to the last few laps there kept being crashes. The last one was right in front of us. It's crazy scary how fast they are going and how fast things change. Because of all that there ended up being 170 laps.

There was a fireworks show after so we got our 4th of July Pyro fix from that.

After Gary took Zurich to the bathroom and took a while coming back so Nev entertained herself on the now empty seats.

It was noisy. That is an understatement.

But it was a good experience that now we can say we have done. But getting the kids to bed at 2am is not something I need to repeat any time soon.