We're Back!

Actually, we've been back for a few days.  I've been busy trying to get my life back in order with paying bills, doing laundry and keeping up with chores.  Thankfully, R didn't leave my house a mess.  I have to admit I was a bit worried about that.  We are so lucky to have great boys who looked after things very well while we were gone.  I felt a little bad when we'd call home and find out it was storming and cold.

We had a great trip with 9 days in Daytona Beach.  Seven of those days were spent at the track.  We saw the Sprint Unlimited race which was on my birthday.  First time I've had fireworks on my birthday, and it was probably my best birthday ever....except that it was a bit cold for Florida, into the 30s.  Not exactly what we were expecting. We were on the infield grass for the pre-race festivities at Daytona!  Pretty exciting!

The next day was Sprint Cup qualifying so there was a lot of action.  From the fan zone we could watch them work on the cars and saw a lot of the drivers, owners and crew chiefs walking back and forth.  We watched the 88 crew put a new engine in Dale Jr.'s car, and M wanted to volunteer to help Joe Nemecheck's crew since he doesn't have much for funding.

We took the day off on Monday and went to the Kennedy Space Center.  M is a bit of a space program fanatic--he can tell you who was on what mission during the Gemini and Apollo days, the years they went up and lots more trivia.  They had a "Cape Canaveral, Then and Now" tour so that's the one we chose.  The tour guides were retired Air Force men that worked on the rockets so it was very interesting to hear their stories.  We didn't have near enough time to see all we wanted to.  We could have spent another day there....or two.  I forgot my camera that day of all days so I took photos with my phone (actually, I had it in my hand but had to run back our room to look for the car keys and sat it down and the left without it).  I'll post those later.

On Tuesday the weather was beautiful and we had our beach day.  We went to the far south end of Daytona Beach to Ponce Inlet and walked the jetty and looked at the old lighthouse there.  It didn't take us long to get a little red--even with sunscreen!  It was windy every day so we felt hot and cold at the same time.  It also was really humid, especially the last couple of days.  Our clothes felt damp before we put them on and we had that clammy feeling all the time--yuck!  How do they keep everything from molding?

Wednesday was back to the track for Sprint Cup practice, Thursday for the Budweiser Duels and Friday for the truck race.  It was the first truck race for us, and we really enjoyed it.  We have a friend who is a big fan of Johnny Sauter so he's a sentimental favorite......and he won!  Too bad he's now in a Toyota so we can't really cheer for him.  We have to draw the line somewhere.

We enjoyed the days at the track when there weren't so many people.  It was noticeably more crowded on Saturday for the Nationwide race.  We were on the infield and right in front for driver introductions so I got some great photos.  Very cool.  The weather was great with near-record temps for this time of year--that's more what we were expecting.  The racing was good, too, until the last lap when there was a big wreck and car parts flew into the stands.  That happened a couple of sections away from where we were but we could see the engine smoking and the tire in the stands.  Scary for the people in that section.

Smoking engine in the stands

Tire in the seats and medical personnel

Sunday was the big day, the Daytona 500!  We headed to the track early to get a parking spot and have breakfast.  We were really getting tired of paying to park, and the cost of a space went up daily.  There was rain in the forecast, but we knew it wouldn't dare rain on our first Daytona 500!  We were right, the showers missed us although it did make for a humid day.  We spent some time in the midway where the merchandise vendors and corporate sponsors were.  There was music and games, food and drinks...and too many people!  We were in the infield again later and got to walk pit lane.  There was a pre-race concert by the Zac Brown Band, one of my favorites.  During driver introductions and the parade lap the drivers were close enough to touch.  Again, very cool to see those guys up close.  The race was great and our guy missed all the wrecks and came in second so we were happy.  We took our time leaving the stands to miss the rush of 150,000 people trying to leave.  Then we stopped and ate at a place near where we were parked to kill some more time and miss the traffic.  It was about six miles from our hotel on the beach to the track and an easy drive.

By Monday morning I was ready to come home.  We decided to head to Orlando so we wouldn't have to get up so early the next morning and worry about getting to our flight on time.  We thought about to Universal Studios but the day got away from us after waiting for an hour and a half for breakfast (which we never got) and then running into a roadblock and having to backtrack to get out of town.  We went to the Florida Mall in Orlando to kill some time.  We flew out on Tuesday morning and ended up being delayed in Denver so spent 5+ hours there.  Not good when we really just wanted to get home and we'd probably had enough togetherness for awhile. Once we got back to Billings we had supper and were ready for bed after being up since 3:30 am our time.

All in all, it was a great trip.  The people in Florida were really friendly (except the girl at A&W at the mall) and we didn't have any problems.  Our hotel was a bit of a dive with awful beds and inconsistent housekeeping, but we've stayed in worse!  Now that we know the ropes we hope to get some friends and family to come along with us next time.

We are officially in cowboy mode now with calving to start very soon.....