Newtomevette

Last week I decided to join the annual event hosted at the National Corvette Museum. Since I bought my 'Vette to drive, we took a nice little 6.5 hours jaunt across several states. One highlight for the event was the track laps, taking your own car out on the track for paced laps.



The mandatory safety meeting before hand was informative and humorous for us newbies. No passing at any time and don't get out of your car unless it's upside down or on fire... or both!



Every thing went fine and was a lot of fun... until we came into the staging area for a second go around. As I pulled up to the car in front of us the brake pedal went to the floor and the brake light came on. Thus ended my track lap adventure. The track manager looked things over as I began wondering what to do next. Thankfully, he made a call to a 'Vette specialist (guys who worked on his own Vette), who could fit me in for some emergency repairs and gave us instructions to take the back roads to get there. Took it slow with our four-ways on for the 20 mile trip to the repair shop.



Can't say enough about these guys. They pulled my car in and said it felt like the pedal was coming back. Long story short, my track laps boiled out the nasty old brake fluid. Had to wait for him to go get the proper fluid, flush and replace and check the pads and calipers. The old fluid was the color of coffee. He told me the pads were slightly glazed but for regular driving I should be fine. We made it back to the scheduled evening dinner right on time. We met the nicest most helpful folks everywhere we went.



Then it was time for a couple of pictures, before we hit the road back home on Sunday.


On our way back we took a little side trip to a national park.



On the final leg of our trip home we stopped for some much needed sustenance.



So for those of you new to C4 ownership and looking for fun and camaraderie, I can recommend this trip as a good first road trip. We hope to be repeat this trip (after making doubly sure everything is well sorted this time) in the future.

Kmcoldcars

I am assuming you went through the cave itself. About how long did it take? I will be in Bowling Green for the Corvette Caravan later this summer and will be going through Mammoth Cave. How did you like it?

Newtomevette

Yes, we went through the cave itself. We took the "historic" tour which takes you in through the originally discovered entrance, I would guess it took about 2 hours. There was a lot of climbing involved (stairs right out of National Treasure), "fat mans torture (real narrow pass where you need to walk sideways) and if you're over 6ft. tall, prepare to duck, a lot. The tour was so cool, we loved it. At one point the ranger giving the tour doused the lights except for what would have been used by the early explorers - a Coleman lantern is LED bright compared to the vintage wick. He then doused the lights completely, giving a feel for how dark it is... could not see a thing! They have other tours too, like the Domes and Dripstones tour, definitely a must see if you're in Kentucky.

95LT1ZF

I hate we missed that event. My son had a soccer tournament and we had to change plans. Oh well. Looks like it was a blast.

Newtomevette

It was indeed. We also went on the bourbon tour. We had a real parade of cars on the interstate and back roads as well. Guys fixing a roof waved at us, garbage men on a truck waved at us en route to our first stop the Maker's Mark distillery. Got a brain freeze from a bourbon Slushie, totally worth it.



By the time we finished there, most of us had gone our own ways. Our next stop included an official tour of the Wild Turkey distillery hosted by a 78 year old former drill instructor named Bubba. The tour itself was fascinating and culminated with a tasting.



After visiting two major distilleries, our final visit was to one of the smaller distilleries Buffalo Trace. It was late in the day and the tours were over, so we picked up some souvenirs and planned dinner.



There were also alternate events such as a visit to the Karting track, if bourbon wasn't your thing, but for us it was about taking our Vette on an adventure.