WATKINS GLEN

Well, we are back from our week in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York.  Let me just say this, if you ever get the opportunity to visit this area, GO!  It is absolutely beautiful.  I won't bore you with home movie of our vacation, but here is one of my favorite pictures of the area ...

Grapes grow everywhere, and by everywhere I mean Everywhere!  There were even a few grapevines growing in the track infield! 

Speaking of the track, here are my thoughts on Watkins Glen....

THE TRACK

Watkins Glen is what is called a "road course" which means that the cars don't drive in a circle or an oval.  They actually turn left AND right.  If you have never seen a race, this is unique as most tracks require only left turns.  And that is as much technical information as you are going to get in this installment of Nascar Wife 101.

Our tickets were for an area known as "The Bog."  It is a special area in the infield (the inside of the track as opposed to grandstand seats on the outside of the track) under several large tents.  We chose these tickets for several reasons:

• Access to an area to get out of the hot summer sun if we want
• Private restrooms - this girl doesn't do porta-potties!
• Ability to walk around the infield to see the race at different places
• Food & drink included - no need to seek out concession stands & wait in line

Well, I suppose these tickets were a good choice for us first-timers, but we definitely feel we did not get our money's worth.  The track sold more tickets than they had seats, and since many people came early and turned "their" chair, essentially reserving their seat for the ENTIRE DAY even though they weren't sitting in them for more than an hour or two  ...  we didn't have a place to sit and ended up sitting on the hay bales which were meant for decoration to eat our meal!  Made me a little crazy, but at my age I've learned to just let stuff go ....

Before the race we were able to walk around the pit road area which is a neat thing to do.  Here is a picture of Hubby getting an answer to a question for a Nascar official.  These are some of the nicest and most approachable people in all of sports.  This man was checking in tires but he is also the guy who waves the flags throughout the race.  Really neat guy and we learned a lot talking with him.

Some of the places we walked to along the track were really fun to watch the cars whizzzz by.  There is an area known as the "bus stop" (no idea why!) that was just plain crazy to watch how the cars navigated through.  We could actually see their right front tires coming off the track - at speeds of 200 mph!  Observing the fans was also entertaining for me too.  There was a horrific accident, which we missed because it was at a spot on the track that we could not see and which resulted in a 'red flag' that lasted an hour and half!  That was a long time to find something else to do, but we were lucky enough to find a shade tree with a cool breeze so we took a seat and relaxed for awhile.  If we had had grandstand seats I'm not sure what we would have done.  It appeared as though a lot of people actually left.

Would I go back to this race?  Probably not, but maybe.  If Hubby wants to go again, I would - just because I am SUCH a good wife.  Or maybe we can convince our friends to join us next time and the boys can go to the race and the girls can just hang out.  I'm happy wherever!  :-)

OUR TRIP

We spent the rest of the week touring the beautiful Finger Lakes region, visiting wineries and craft breweries as well as hiking Watkins Glen Gorge State Park and walking the streets of Hammondsport, America's Coolest Small Town 2012.  And although we did not go to Corning Museum of Glass, it would certainly have been doable.  This was such a fun trip!  There are 118+ wineries in this region, and every one is unique and most have a very interesting history.  Of course we only made it to a few so a return trip would be completely different but equally wonderful. 

Our camping headquarters for the week was at Hickory Hill Family Camping Resort in the quaint little town of Bath, NY.  It was approximately a 45 minute drive to the track, but that is what we like.  Camping at the track can be noisy and rowdy at times.  We prefer the tranquility we always find when we are willing to travel a bit.  There were lots of other race fans at the campground so Hubby had plenty of race buddies to talk to, but it was nice to have more than two feet of space between us and the next guy!

THE TAKE-AWAY

I'm glad I went to this track, but I'm not in a hurry to go back again. I felt like we missed a really good race, simply because you can't see the whole track the whole time. There were some large TV screens scattered around the track, but not nearly enough, and if I want to watch a race on TV, I'll stay home and watch it from the comfort of my living room on my own big screen.

But I could go to the Finger Lakes region again ... and again ... and again!  In fact, I'm already planning next year's tour!!



Our next race weekend will be camping at our "home track" - The Monster Mile in Dover, Delaware, in September.  We have done this several times before so if you want any information about this track before the race, just leave a comment. 

Until next time ....