Thursday 3rd June, Natural Bridge, - Statesville North Carolina

Hi it’s the animal spotter Lauren who is back in business. Today we went to natural bridge and a wax museum. So off we went to the wax museum da da dada and we are there. We went into the Wax Museum and there were lots of wax people staring at you, Olivia thought it was a bit spooky. It also shows you how they make the wax people. After we walked to the natural bridge which is a big rock that we went under and hoping it won’t fall on us, we walked on to the Monacan Indians village where they showed us what it would be like to live like them. We went into their tent house thing and it was all smokey at the top. We carried on with the walk and I put my hand on a rock wall…. the animal hunter is back there was a snake! SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE EKKK!!!! I nearly touched the snake. We carried on and came to the end to a waterfall and started to walk back. We went past the snaked again, the Indians tent, the rock and to the end. Now Thomas found a water snake in the river next to us. We got back to the rv and had a big ice block it’s so hot. By the animal spotter Lauren

Hi Its Thomas, here to talk about the Natural Bridge..The Natural Bridge is like a rock that we walked under. We then went for a walk to a small water fall that is as tall as the Niagara Falls, well I think it is? But it’s not very wide. Then we saw an old Indian lady and man talking about how it was like 300 years ago. They talked about Virginia Native Americans in the authentic Monacan Village.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a high altitude National Park that stretches for 469 miles; it’s a beautiful drive with lots of stop off picnic rest area with awesome panoramic views. The road follows the highest ridges from Shenandoah to the Great Smokey Mountains which includes the Appalachian Mountain ranges, altitude gets as high as 6000 feet (mostly we were between 3 – 4000 ft) Getting onto the road is trickier than it sounds as it is not particularly well signposted. We joined it shortly after the Natural Bridge and only did about 3 hours worth, as beautiful as it was it was… same and same again around every windy corner and the RV wasn’t quite the right vehicle for such a narrow windy road now a motorbike would be a completely different story. There’s not one town or petrol station on the entire stretch. Then we came across an accident scene (Fatal I think?) I’ve never seen so many cops, Fireman, National Park Dudes all in one place (New York might be the exception) so we decided to head back to civilization again. A couple of wiggly woggly “C” roads and off we went again on an Interstate in the direction of Charlotte North Carolina. NOTE: Thursday 3rd & Friday 4th photos were unfortunately deleted Photos are from the internet.

Wednesday 3rd June 2010 Lewisburg, West Virginia - Natural Bridge Virginia

After waking in the Wal-Mart car parks I quite often get my best friend out,…….. Yes my GPS and type in attractions around my current destination. Closest to us today was an old stone church and a museum and only a couple of miles away. What a find, this town is so beautiful, It has been named one of the 100 best small towns in USA and you can see why its Fab-u-lous . This town is full of many well preserved Historical beautiful buildings, one of which was the 1769 Old Stone Presbyterian Church that we did go into. We had a guided tour around North House Museum which showcased the immaculately restored house and the finest examples of early Virginia furnishings and the history of West Virginia and the civil war. The tour was very good but the tour guide did draw it out a little too long. We walked to the fantastic boutiques and antique shops where Geoff bought an old Coca Cola Sign? The whole area is preserved, there is no Mc Donalds or other takaway chains aloud around here which is a pleasant change.
Hi it’s Lauren. We arrived at the Yogi Bear campground and it was so hot we went for a swim straight away. After dinner we were cooking marshmallows over the camp fire and I Lauren Milliken spotted fireflies. I have also spotted a raccoon, snake and a rare 4 leaf clover and now fireflies! (We have seen lots of squirrels too.)There glow went on and off and one went behind mums head. That was fun. The animal spotter will be back. Lauren
Hi it’s Olivia. I saw fireflies. They glow in the dark. The internet says there are over 2,000 firefly species and they glow to try and attract a mate. It was glowing and then stopped on and off. That was my first time I have seen fireflies in my whole life. That was fun. By Olivia

Tuesday 1st June 2010 Dayton – Lewisburg, West Virginia

Today we are off to The National Museum of the United States Air Force which is the largest and oldest military aviation museum. This was absolutely free and featured more than 400 aircraft from air balloons to the presidential aircraft and unmanned air vehicles. Unlike the Smithsonian in DC this is the Airforces own museum and it is HUGE. The guy on the front Desk said that if we just stopped and watched every Video alone without walking or stopping at any planes it would take 8 hours. Needless to say, we only watched a small percentage of the video content. First up we jumped on the bus and went and saw the Retired Presidents aircraft, the typical Security checks were all done first including having to show your Passports, just in case you are a terrorist. Kennedys Airforce One was the highlight being the biggest, there were 4 Presidents Aircraft in all and you could do a walk=through on each one. In an adjoining Hangar was an experimental aircraft section which had some weird and wonderful stuff, the one that dwarfed the lot was the Valkyrie Supersonic Bomber, sort of a Concord on steroids, very cool. Then back to the 6 Hangars all laid out in an easy to follow order Early Years / World War 2 / Korean War / South East Asia War / Cold War / Current Operations and then a Missile and Space Gallery. We arrived at 11.00 and were kicked out at 5.00 when they shut. Im not a huge Plane Buff but the share scale of achievement and the relatively short time frame can’t help but blow you away. The current operations section for me was the highlight as there were some aircraft in here which I’d never seen or heard of…. Nothing like a good war to advance Aviation is the overwhelming outcome of the tour. By 5.00 we were all planed out, in fact I can guarantee you this will be the last for this trip. Bring on the car stuff I say.
If the day wasn’t long enough we hit the road for Lewisburg Walmart some 6 hours down the road. The Starship Enterprise (RV) was put to the test with some huge climbs into Virginia, she handled them all beautifully in her stride, passing all the trucks up hill, only to have the trucks scream by her down the hills on the other side.

Monday 31st May Indianapolis – Dayton, Ohio

Well its D day again, yes we are Driving out of here. We packed up and said our goodbyes, that took a while not getting out till about 11am and headed towards Dayton – The birthplace of aviation? Not such a long drive but we needed to get to get a few jobs done NO. 1 on the list it to get rid of the sewage and grey water that has been steeping in up to 96 Fahrenheit for the last 4 days yum yum? We also did a few loads of washing which took the rest of the day. We had some very late nights in Indianapolis so we hit the sack early ready for another big day ahead.

Sunday 30th May Indianapolis 500

Happy Birthday to me, happy Birthday to me … this all started at 12.01 the night before on George St (a huge Party street not unlike Bourbon St New Orleans but twice as long and 5 times more drunken people) and we went through until 3.00 am. Probably not the best preparation before the big race but you only turn 27 (again) once right.
The race doesn’t start until 1.00 pm so we had a good sleep in and leisurely morning. People start arriving at 6.00 am when the gates open and there are heaps of things going on prior to the race. The build up to the race is all part of the fun, 12 versions of star Spangled Banner(at least felt like 12 times) , march pasts of all the armed forces building up to the Airforces Jet low level fly-by and a massive balloon release, there’s no doubting you are in American apple pie land, it’s fun…. Then comes the famous … Gentlemen START YOUR ENGINES … the engines erupt and so does the crowd, all 300,000 of them, we were down by Scott Dixon on the wall and it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. We then scurried back to our allocated seats which were in a great posi right opposite the Pits at the end of the main straight. The first start up lap was waved off by Jack Nicholson (the Actor) and the sight and sound of 30 cars at full RPM 2 and 3 wide, tightly bunched is a great buzz. The first crash came within half a lap, so the pace car was immediately out, a few laps later they were back to full noise and the race settled into a pattern of pit stops and full speed runs. The race just happened to be the hottest ever recorded (96 degrees F) and so we all sweated buckets, Olivia was the water spay girl keeping everybody cool. Crashes come and go but none of the front runners are caught up in them. Scott came in for his pit stop in 5th place and left in 23rd after the left hand front wheel guy didn’t do it up properly … effectively race over for the Kiwi. From here on Dixon continued a slow but steady climb back through the field to eventually finish Fourth which was a very good result, all considering. The race winner Scott Dixons team-mate Dario Franchitti was a deserving winner, qualified on pole and leading most of the laps. The very last lap featured one of the biggest crashes that almost took out the first and second place getter, it would rate right up there for all time with a car climbing into the catch fence, how nobody died in that one is a mystery.
To summaries the event, I would have to put at or close to the best I’ve ever done. Having Scott Dixon at the pointy end of the field certainly makes a big difference. I’m keen to come back so it must have been good.

Saturday 29th May Indianapolis

This morning Wayne kindly drove Lauren, Thomas, Olivia and I (Bernise) into Indianapolis City to see the Indy 500 Parade. It was about 9.45 and quite hot already. Many of the streets were blocked off so we had a little way to walk. Passing a few Starbucks I couldn’t help myself I had to get my fix for the day? As it happened just across the road was a fantastic spot on the corner in the shade. Glenys (Scotts mother) said we had to get there early, and boy was she right we sat waiting for nearly 2 hours and ended up packed around us. The parade went on for two hours, and was fantastic, we lucked it by being on the side of the road that Scott came down. Before he reached us we got our large silver fern flag out and waved it around (probably looked like plonkers) but it was well worth it, we definitely got a lot of attention and Scotts face lit up with a huge smile, he yelled back… thanks for coming, thanks so much… and you could see he meant it… It was a huge buzz and made the wait well worthwhile.
Hi it’s Thomas again, I saw Scott Dixon on the back of a Ute with his wife in the parade. We waved our flag and said Scott Dixon loud, he turned around and he was really pleased to see us. There was a big floating man that nearly fell onto the crowd, which was very funny.

While the kids went to the parade I went with the boys to John Forces race manufacturing facility and wow was it immmppprrreessive. They look after 4 separate team cars and there are 4 funny-cars each, two in the trailer and two under construction plus the parts trucks has enough to build another car, that’s 20 cars between them. Another impressive aspect is that they have about 20 milling machines for which they bring in big solid chunks of billet alloy and then proceed to carve almost every single part on the engine starting with a huge chunk for the block, about the only parts they don’t make is the valves and bearings. The design concepts and experimental department is constantly looking for an edge and they showed us a few blown up parts that didn’t quite make the grade. Effectively the only FORD part on the funny-cars is the Badge everything else is custom. They take 70 guys to each meeting and have another 25 back at base full time. Castrol (there sponsor) must have very deep pockets. The plant also has a big museum with about 10 previously campaigned cars and a showroom full of goodies, Robert Hight one of the star drivers present was signing autographs so I had him make one out to Stephen my Brother. This took care of half a day. On top of John Force was the Lucas Geico Top Fuel Dragster facility… again very impressive, we took in two speedway manufacturing plants and the Vance and Hines motorcycle set up…. This knocked the day out IN STYLE.

The evening held yet another treat.. a nearby track has a Speedway Sprintcar (small Block V8s) meeting (on tarmac) and 2 Wings and Slicks (like our formula Toyota Class) classes one with 2 lt Mazda motors and another quicker Rotary class… petrolhead heaven. The famdamily all came home thoroughly worn out.

Friday 28th May Indianapolis

This was our first chance to get inside the track and have a look around. This place is huge, First up was the Indy Warm-up session, the last chance to fine tune before race-day, there are no assigned seats and we decided to set up camp right behind Scotts Pit, Scott finished up Second fastest right behind his teammate.We again caught up with Glenys, Scotts mum.
Next is what is called Carb Day which is the Indy Lights Race, New Zealands Wade Cunningham drove a faultless race to win for the third straight year, this gave all the Kiwi contingent something to cheer about and we hoped it was a good omen for Scott on Sunday.
From here we visited the Indy Museum which was a great experience in itself and a good movie outlining the long and proud history of the track and the race that we were about to see. The race significance and the share scale of what Scott Dixon has done so far from little ole NZ really starts to dawn on you.
A long hot day; and a taste of things to come.