RV Travels With Huggy

I am a little behind in posting. It has been a busy week and will probably continue that way for at least through this weekend. I posted a photo last week of Annie and son M when M was about a year old. Here is one of him from this year, cutting his birthday cake with the help of one of his sister-in-laws:


On Friday my brother, L, retired after 37 years with the same employer. He came over to visit me, dropping off one of his sons to visit a college friend on the way. One of the things L & I did was to attend the SOVERN Vintage Sports Car Races at Pacific Raceways in Auburn, WA. They are held every year there over the 4th of July holiday weekend as a fund raiser for Children's Hospital in Seattle. I used to attend them pretty regularly & now that I am back getting involved with a car club I decided to go again. The day was hot & sunny, nearly perfect weather for an event like this. Those displaying their cars in a corral get to go out on the course to drive two laps around it during the lunch break. This is a fairly fast trip but not racing speeds. We were lead by a car that controlled the speed & we could't pass the vehicle in front of us.

Each year they select a different marque to feature, the only requirement being that they be older than 1974. This year it was the Allard or Cad Allard as most of them had Cadillac V-8 engines. They were built in the US in the early 1950s and were kind of brutish cars, not at all like many of the later ones that were delicate in comparison. Here is a photo of one of the 22 or so of these cars that were there:


Not all of the Allards participated in the race. Many were there as Car Club Corral vehicles but were fun to look over. However, some did race and here is one of those going at speed around turn 8:


When actual racing started, the pace car led each race group once around the track before they actually started racing. This is the start of one of the small bore (smaller cars) groups passing by some of the new but not yet open grand stands on the other side of the track. Those new stands are mainly for drag races as they will be too far away from the road course for good viewing. This photo shows some of the many different cars that participated:


I am not sure just what this car is. I have a program that should list them all, but it is at home and I am sitting in my RV in Ellensburg, about half way to Life on Wheels, so I don't have that. I will try to remember to check when I get home & edit this post and the listing on Flickr to add the name. It is a bigger & faster car than the first race group:


These photos were all taken with my 70 - 300mm zoom lens, most at or near 300mm. It was too long to take good photos in the pits as people would walk through my photo since I had to be so far away. My brother did take some photos with a standard lens but his photos are on my desktop PC, also at home, so I can't add them here. Maybe later when I get to Spokane where he lives.

We spent the rest of the weekend playing around Mt. Vernon. We did go see the new "Superman" movie on Saturday, drank a mocha a day & of course visited a couple of book stores. I bought a small MP-3 player which I have never owned before & we got some music transferred to it from my CDs. I bought some individual songs online. It was fun having him there & I hated to have him leave the morning of the 4th. But he needed to get home & I needed to start loading my RV for this trip I am now on.

The evening of the 4th I was invited to my son M's home 20 miles south of me for a yard picnic & to watch their neighborhood fireworks display. My other son was also there with three of his kids & step kids. Here are those three GKs waiting for the start of the fireworks. It started before dark with some of those that are mainly made for daytime use:


This is one of son M's little nieces who isn't at all sure she likes all that smoke & noise:


As darkness fell sparklers were brought out and all but the smallest ones got to play with them under close supervison. This is one of M's SILs, lighted only by the sparkler. The focus isn't perfect but I don't do real well hand holding real slow exposures & it wasn't a time for posed shots with a tripod:


This is one of the aerial displays. You can see the light trail as it climbed to blowup. I was bracing myself on the car to improve the sharpness & it is better:


This is one of the final ones, looking nearly straight up. Again you can see the trail it left as it climbed to blowup & leave so many "stars":


These firework photos were all taken with my small Sony camera. I wish I had taken the Nikon but didn't want to have to carry it all evening. It sure does a better job, though.

I finished loading the RV this morning and got away from home about 12:30, driving to Ellensburg, WA which is about half way to Moscow, Idaho where the Life on Wheels Conference will be at the University of Idaho. I will get a fairly early start tomorrow morning for what should be less than a four hour drive. We who are on the parking crew have to be there before the start of the event to get the parking areas setup, then people will start arriving on Friday. We'll park them when they arrive, finishing about 14:00 on Sunday, in time for the opening ceremonies about 15:00. After that I get to attend classes, visit with friends & enjoy the event. I will for sure get some photos there. Now to upload this rather large post.