Vacation adventure: NASCAR race, Hatfield-McCoy ATV trails

The Bristol Gang from Minnesota's Open Trails ATV Club: Scott and Diana Brecht of Buffalo, Steve and Beth Herzog of Gem Lake, Tim and Lisa Houts of Buffalo, Stan and Rosie Schmidt of Elk River.

The vacation mission: Drive to Bristol, Tenn., for the Nextel Cup Food City 500 -- the first NASCAR race for all of us -- and then trek to the Hatfield-McCoy ATV trails in West Virginia.

Changing plans: Steve and Beth were forced to alter their plans. Beth wasn't fully recovered from major foot surgery, so they'll skip the ATV adventure. They'll fly from Minneapolis to Knoxville, Tenn., where they'll rent a car and drive about 100 miles to Bristol and meet us at the campground.

The rigs -- all diesel powered: The Brechts drive a Ford F-350 dualie carrying a Northstar pickup camper and towing an 18-foot enclosed trailer carryng Scott's Honda Rincon 650 and Diana's Arctic Cat 400. The Houts drive a Ford F-350 dualie carrying a Winnebago pickup camper and towing an 18-foot open car hauler carrying Tim's Polaris Sportsman 700 and Lisa's Sportsman 400. The Schmidts drive a Dodge Ram 3500 towing a 35-foot Weekend Warrior toy hauler carrying Stan's green Sportsman 700 and Rosie's blue Sportsman 700.

How do you get tickets to Bristol? Tickets to a Bristol race are almost as hard to get as tickets to a Green Bay Packers game. Season ticket holders have a lock on the $88 tickets. Both Bristol races (the August race is under the lights) are sold out months in advance. But Stan and Rosie knew somebody who knew somebody. Their daughter, Christine, has a brother-in-law, Steve LaDuke, who has eight season tickets to both races, and he agreed to sell his March tickets. Thank you, Steve!

Put the pedal to the metal: We left Elk River at 6 a.m. Friday, March 27. Eighteen hours and 847 miles later, we pulled into a rest stop 16 miles west of Lexington, Ky. Six hours of sleep worked wonders. The rest of the trip to Bristol -- 301 miles in 6 hours -- was a piece of cake; we arrived at the campground around noon.

Flying isn't always the fastest way: We expected Steve and Beth to be waiting for us when we arrived at the campground Saturday. But we beat them by several hours. Turns out that Northwest Airlines had overbooked the Friday Minneapolis-Knoxville flight, so Steve and Beth opted to take a Saturday flight in return for a couple meals and a Minneapolis hotel room courtesy of the airline. They didn't get into Knoxville until after the rest of us were already set up at the campground. Steve and Beth's tent and sleeping bags also arrived in Knoxville before they did.

Peaceful Valley Campground: Operated as a fund-raiser for the Gateway Baptist Church, the campground is 1.5 miles from the race track. We were among the last of about 100 RVs and tents scattered around the congregation's 27 acres. The campground, in operation for only its second year and billed as the "official non-alcoholic campground of the Bristol Motor Speedway," offered free shuttle service to the track, indoor toilets and hot showers, an all-you-can-eat continental breakfast on the morning of the race, fire ring and firewood ($5 donation recommended) and even a free copy of the Bristol Herald Courier delivered to your RV doorstep or tent flap on Sunday morning.

We reserved four sites back in September. We should have known how nice these folks were going to be when they sent us Christmas cards. They also provided a Saturday night outdoor concert, Sunday morning church services and went out of their way to make sure we were comfortable.

The other campgrounds: As soon as we had our rigs leveled, we walked to the track to see if we could catch the end of the Busch race and hunt for souvenirs. That's when we discovered we had the best campground in Bristol. RVs were parked and tents pitched anywhere and everywhere, and as close as they could fit -- business parking lots, empty fields, front yards as well as back yards and side yards. Road shoulders and ditches were the exception -- those were reserved for thousands of cars and trucks. The socializing and partying obviously went on around the clock. Peaceful Valley Campground, in contrast, lived up to its name and provided lots of elbow room -- and our fellow campers even turned off their generators before midnight.

First impressions of Bristol Motor Speedway: This place looks more like a football stadium than a race track, and it doesn't look this small on television. Looks are deceiving, but it takes a mere 15 seconds for a race car to navigate around the half-mile concrete track. Another surprise: We couldn't hear the Busch race as we walked to the track. Not until we walked into the grandstands as Saturday's race finished -- Martin Truex Jr. won -- did we get a hint of how noisy it was going to be on Sunday: vendors were passing out handfuls of free Advil to the 100,000 fans leaving the race.

Mostly Kenseth fans: Of the eight of us, six are predominantly Matt Kenseth fans, mainly because the 2003 Winston Cup champion is a Midwest (Cambridge, Wis.) boy. Tim also cheers for Mark Martin, Rosie for Rusty Wallace, Scott for Kasey Kahne, Steve and Beth for Jimmie Johnson and Stan for Ryan Newman (he drives a Dodge) and Scott Wimmer (he's another Wisconsinite -- so are Stan and Rosie -- and he drives a Dodge).

Souvenir hunting: We separated and started the hunt. A couple hours later we regrouped, all of us carrying new T-shirts, hats, key chains, decals, shorts and/or other goodies featuring our favorite drivers. Scott even got Kahne to sign a hat and Stan got Wimmer's autograph on a decal. Steve and Beth later made a shopping run to the Bristol Wal-Mart, where they stumbled across Bobby Allison signing autographs; Allison obliged on Steve's T-shirt. We walked back to the campground, where we cooked hot dogs on a wood fire, watched the stars come out and hit the sack early.

The sun shines mostly in Tennessee: We couldn't have asked for better weather. We did encounter some light rain late Saturday, but for the most part it was sunny. The thermometer hit the 80s on race day -- T-shirt and shorts weather. We even broke out the sun screen.

Rise and shine: We boarded the campground shuttle around 10 a.m. Sunday. Traffic on the main road was at a virtual standstill. Almost every cop within 200 miles must have been in Bristol directing traffic. Thankfully, our driver knew the backroads, and he delivered us to the track in plenty of time to walk past the vendor trailers one last time before the race's 1 p.m. start.

Most frequently heard words before the race: Got your ticket? (We double- and triple-checked purses or pockets to make sure we had them.)

How do you cram 165,000 people into BMS? Generous use of aluminum bench seats, shoulder-to-shoulder, knees-to-back seating. If the person in front of you stood up, you couldn't see anything. We had good seats in the 15th row on Turn 1, but it looked like you could see the entire track from any seat. The atmosphere started to heat up slowly with a few speeches and driver introductions. Then three U.S. Air Force jets turned on their afterburners (as well as the fans) as they flew over the track and someone uttered "Gentlemen, start your engines."

The race: Kurt Busch won the Food City 500 for the third straight year, holding off Wallace during a final two-lap shootout; Kenseth finished fifth. The noise was incredible -- high quality ear protection was a prerequisite; the only time you could talk to the person next to you was when the drivers eased up on their throttles for a caution flag. You could actually feel the noise and power as 43 cars came around Turn 1, followed closely by the smell of tire rubber. The race itself lacked a lot of edge-of-your-seat drama and there were no spectacular crashes. The most excitement -- at least for us relatively few non-Dale Earnhardt, Jr., fans -- came on lap 432 when Earnhardt spun out on the backstretch.

Commentary: I knew there was a reason I don't cheer for Earnhardt. Turns out that spinout on lap 432 was deliberate. Earnhardt, who led the race for 91 laps and seemed on his way to victory, slowed down dramatically because of a loose left-rear wheel. He said he didn't want to go a lap down, so he deliberately caused a caution flag. A bush-league maneuver, in my opinion.

Most frequently heard words after the race: Awesome! Can you hear me? Let's do this again!

Next adventure: We took our time walking back to the campground -- actually, it was faster to walk than drive. We talked racing around the campfire that night, and started to shift gears and get ready for our ATV adventure. We said our goodbyes to Steve and Beth on Monday morning and headed for Gilbert, W.Va.

Part 2: West Virginia's Hatfield-McCoy ATV Trails