World of Outlaws, Kings Royal and RAIN

For the last seven or so years my oldest daughter has given me tickets to World of Outlaws, Kings Royal sprint car races at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. What we do is take the motor home and then she and her husband meet us down there and spend the weekend in the coach with us.

This last weekend was race weekend, so we loaded up and headed out Friday morning about 11 AM. We normally stay at the Darke County Fairgrounds in Greenville, OH for the race weekend. The place is usually pretty deserted other than at fair time so we didn't bother to call and verify we would have a place to stay. Well, guess what! They were having an antique tractor show and the place was totally packed!

Thank God for mapping software and cell phones. We found another campground in the area, Wildcat Woods. It's a small campground with marginal 30 amp electrical service but has plenty of shade and friendly people.

Eldora puts on a race Friday night called the night before the King's Royal that gives the racers and chance to get somewhat dialed into the track. We ended up getting there just in time for the Dash and the feature races. It was a great night of racing with Joey Saldana winning the main event. There was a chance of rain so they made sure the delays were minimal so we were headed back to the coach by 10:30.

Saturday morning we got some rain so we ended up going into Greenville so the ladies could get a little shopping time in. The sun was back out by noon but the forecast was for more rain beginning about 5 PM. We stopped at CJ's for lunch before heading back for naps since we expected it to be a late night due to anticipated rain delays.

We ran into a little rain on the way to the track but they were out running hot laps when we got there. That was very short lived, by the time we got the coolers and seat cushion out of the car the rain had started, shutting everything down.

Once we got a break in the weather we grabbed our stuff and headed into the grand stands. Did I mention we have seats in the covered grand stand area? Well we do so we weren't worried about a little rain.

There was another break in the weather and the push trucks managed to get back out on the track to help dry and pack the dirt racing surface. By 8 PM the rain started again and a little after 9 they postponed the race until Sunday evening. Since 3 of us had to be back to work on Monday morning we ended up missing the race. We're disappointed we missed the race but had a really good time with the kids.

The really hard part of the whole trip was the stop at the gas station just before getting home. We had driven about 540 miles on that tank of fuel so I figured we would need about 60 gallons of diesel. We thought about just waiting to fill up when we pulled out in the fall, but figured it would have gone up a bunch more by then. We bit the bullet and pumped 62.5 gallons, at $4.79 a gallon, adding $300 to the credit card. We just keep telling ourselves if we didn't have the coach we would be spending all that money on heat. We would much rather send our winters where it's warm than watching the snow fall.