Day Eleven- Morning Walk, Track Craft Beer Festival and Jean Meets Martin

I post this picture first to explain our morning walking loop today. We were walking and as we approached the other side of the campground where it is the closest to the highway that fronts the property, we could see that there had been a fender-bender involving three vehicles. No one injured. There is a man standing on the edge of the campground watching the proceedings, and as I am prone to do, I struck up a conversation with him. It turns out he was the very proud grandpa of XFinity driver, Daniel Hemric. The car above hasn't been on the track since Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove it some years ago in Winston Cup. Hemric made his Monster Energy Cup debut tonight in that car. In about five minutes I had been regaled with all of the different divisions and championships that had led them to this moment. He was very proud of his grandson and that is why you should always say hi, you just never know....


We then made our way to the beer fest at the track. It was a very good time. It wasn't overly packed so you could talk to many of the brewers and some were very willing to talk to you. There were several beers that really stood out. The president of the Virginia Craft Brewers overheard us talking to the fellow from Coelacanth about their Porter, and he talked Jean into trying a porter from another brewery that had jalepenos in it. In a word: awful. We tried to take it easy as we had to stay awake for the race later. These are some of the breweries that we enjoyed the most.

The Brewery Coelacanth (See-lo-can-th) is named after a fish, apparently not a very good looking fish. In this picture, try not to look at Jean, look at the saying around the canopy on the tent to the left of her.

As a bonus, that we didn't know about, they had two driver appearances during the afternoon. The first was Paul Menard. He is the son of the Menards Building Supply Company founder.He was at first considered a silver spooner, but has won races and shown that he belongs.

And then HE came in and Jean was in a swoon. Martin Truex in the house.

He almost got away before she worked up the courage, but he turned back around and did one more autograph for, guess who?

Then I made dinner for her because between the Beer and Martin she was a mess and it didn't look like she would snap out of it anytime soon.

Then we went to the race.