Hot Rod Power Tour 2008: Day One: The Drive North

The beginning of a new adventure. I was about to embark on my first Hot Rod Power Tour.

My father and I were up by 7 am planning on hitting up the drivers meeting. I decided to skip that and get a jump on the driving.

We got all packed up, and shot out of Little Rock around 8 am and headed north.

We weren't the only ones who had the same idea. Heading up I-40 we were in a group of about a dozen Power Tour guys and gals. We all were cruising along at the speed limit. We passed a bunch of people though, my dad and I could hear that they had some steep gears and were trying to keep the RPM's down. We felt bad for them as we passed by.

Today was an absolutely amazing trip. Going through he Ozarks was absolutely beautiful. There were hills and mountains. Living in Illinois you grow to appreciate un-level ground!

The Caprice had no major problems on the route. I was I had gone through the tranny and done a few more upgrades. But I can only do so much in one week. She ran cool, didn't hesitate going up and down those hills.

We decided to take our time though, we stopped along the way at a fruit stand in the mountains for some fresh apples and peaches. Watched the classic cars go by. We jumped back on the route and headed back down the mountain.

This is where it became truly sad when we passed through the area that had recently been levelled by a tornado just a few weeks earlier. The destruction was incredible. Everything was levelled. There was no homes or trees, just some sort of silo that was laying on its side. I was saddened to see that, I had seen some horrible things in the past year, and this just made the list.

Next we went through Branson, MO which I heard is where famous people from the past go in the twilight years of their career. We decided not to indulge our curiosity of who was there and continued on our way.

We were cruising with a bunch of Corvettes for a while and a Nomad. We pulled into Springfield, MO around noon and got into line to get into the park. We were a bit ahead of the rest of the group, we got a spot right in the middle of the vendors area.

The vendors were still setting up when we parked. We grabbed our Power Tour passes and began going through and seeing what Springfield had for us.

There were some crazy cars at this stop. It turned out to be a absolutely beautiful day and the turnout was great. All of the parking lots and fields that I saw were full of cars.

I am Mopar bias, but tried to grab a variety of pictures. I walked the entire thing and then went back and just chilled with some of my friends for a few hours, watching the cars come in.

The show started winding down after the drawing at 6, so our group waited for the traffic to start to thin before we headed out.

I had the craving for Sonic, I hadn't had a Sonic burger in years since my time at Western Illinois University and desperately wanted one, so that's where we went for dinner and no one was disappointed. Nothing better then a Sonic Burger on a hungry stomach.

After getting Sonic I just happened to find a Frozen Custard place, so we stopped by there real quick. It looked like a classic ice cream drive in. It was good too.

We parted company for the night and my dad and I headed back to our hotel where I met up with some more gearheads and we began talking and were talking up until a few minutes ago.

Tomorrow looks to be another amazing day, but there is a possibility of rain. So it should be interesting.