Day Six - Sleet, 38 Degrees, Coldest race ever, Snow....We have been politely asked to go home.

Woke up this morning to 41 degrees. Little did we know, that was to be the high for the day. We ate a slow breakfast and headed back to the track wearing all of the long sleeves and sweatshirts that we brought with us. Arrived at the track and then this.....a little hard to tell, but it is a pretty intense snow squall. All of the nice people in line with us thanked us for bringing it with us.

Unfortunately things went downhill from here. Race time came and so did the sleet, but good news here, apparently sleet isn't as wet as rain, so the track was dried very quickly and the race resumed just a few minutes late.

Everyone still apparently looked way too comfortable, so the wind kicked up to about a steady 15 to 20 miles an hour with some much higher gusts with the temperature hovering around a balmy 38 degrees. I have sat on Lake Champlain in the middle of February ice fishing and haven't been that kind of cold. It was a special day, and to top it off, one of the drivers that we like, Kyle Larsen, had the dominant car all day, except on a short run. It took about 20 laps for his car too really take off. The caution flag flies with 15 to go and Kyle (pronounced Cry-le) Bush, who had an extremely fast 10 lap car wins the race, just the ice cream topping to the day. Jean said if he wins again Saturday night in Richmond, she may never go again.

After the race, we argued a bit and Jean won, so I took her to the Big Bass Pro Shop here. They have a huge presence in Nascar and the store is quite large. Seriously though, the exhibits at Cabelas and Bass Pro are worth the stop almost anywhere. The pics below are just from the entrance. The front of the store was really unique also, but there was another whiteout going on at the time, so we didn't dally on the way in. Oh, did I forget to mention that the weather got worse after the race? Freeze Warnings are flashing on my phone every two minutes: "We will refund your money if you promise to never come back again." I can't say we haven't taxed their hospitality, it was 85 degrees when we arrived and now it is 35. Things are supposed to rebound Tuesday, back into the sixties.

 We ate dinner at an Outback located in the same plaza as Bass Pro and headed back to the camper in what was now almost a full scale blizzard. Good news is, it wasn't sticking to anything, including the roads.

Due to the race being run on Monday, we have altered our plans for the rest week. We are going to explore the Bristol area tomorrow and head to Richmond on Wednesday.