Tara has her own website and additionally a shop forum on TampaRacing.com:

Since 2016, Tara's shop forum has had over 9,500 views on Tampa Racing.
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/t...n-orlando.html

Every year, Tampa Racing has been privileged with Tara's writeup of the Hot Rod Power Tour.
Here is the tour for 2019:
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/e...ur-2019-a.html

 

Steve & Tara's Power Tour!


The 25th HOT ROD Power Tour is the highly anticipated seven-day, seven-city journey for all enthusiasts and is expected to bring together more than 6,000 vehicles and 100,000-plus spectators making this event the largest traveling car-show in the world. This year it travels from Zmax Dragway in Concord, NC to Summit Motorsport Park in Norwalk, OH with stops in Martinsville VA, Bristol TN, Sparta KY, Indianapolis IN, and Fort Wayne IN.


Follow us as we tour the back roads of rural America for our 9th consecutive tour in Tara's 1967 Acadian Canso Sport Deluxe (that's Canadian for those not familiar with the car) and Steve's 2014 Corvette (driven by Steve's parents). Our daily blog is an highlighted account (sometimes humorous) of the scenery, cars, food and anything photo worthy (in my opinion).

 

Russ Muller Photography


This year we have a special person traveling with us on the Hot Rod Power Tour Russ Muller Photography, who is a very big contributor to TampaRacing.com and Cruisin Orlando. He'll be driving his green 1971 Gran Prix. Check out his awesome photos HERE

Russ Muller has had over 1,000+ views since joining TampaRacing.com with his shop forum:
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/t...pa-racing.html

 

Hot Rod Power Tour Daily Blog

Home » Featured Posts » Hot Rod Power Tour Daily Blog
Contributed by Tara Bush (photographer) & Steve Klein (writer)




The 25th HOT ROD Power Tour is the highly anticipated seven-day, seven-city journey for all enthusiasts and is expected to bring together more than 6,000 vehicles and 100,000-plus spectators making this event the largest traveling car-show in the world. This year it travels from Zmax Dragway in Concord, NC to Summit Motorsport Park in Norwalk, OH with stops in Martinsville VA, Bristol TN, Sparta KY, Indianapolis IN, and Fort Wayne IN.

Follow us as we tour the back roads of rural America for our 9th consecutive tour in Tara's 1967 Acadian Canso Sport Deluxe (that's Canadian for those not familiar with the car) and Steve's 2014 Corvette (driven by Steve's parents). Our daily blog is an highlighted account (sometimes humorous) of the scenery, cars, food and anything photo worthy (in my opinion). Follow along starting Friday June 7, 2019.

 

Steve and Tara's Power Tour Adventures

A day by day blog of the annual Hot Rod Power Tour

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

HRPT 2019 - Gettin' There: June 6-7- Orlando, FL to Concord (Charlotte), NC (981 miles)

Our Power Tour excitement started the day before we left when Don finally diagnosed and eliminated the Acadian front end squeak we've been chasing for more than a year. It was a bad front spring perch. Fortunately, since Don just recently restored a 1967 Nova, he had a new one on his shelf and swapped it out.



One last tweak to end the squeak


Even though the Power Tour starts in Charlotte and is a day's drive, we hit the road bright and early on Thursday, June 6 with a plan to visit close family friends near Burnsville. Tara, my parents and I met up with our friend and famed automotive photographer Russ Muller and his 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix and headed out of town.


St. John's Sunrise


We managed to beat Jacksonville rush hour traffic before making our first of nearly countless gas stops. The Acadian averages about 15 mpg and the gas gauge reads about 3 gallons low, so how far we can actually go ends up being part gas gauge, part logic and a lot of "yeah, I think we can go 20 more miles before we stop." That plan's worked for the last 8 years why change.

 

This year's a bit different since we took I-95 rather than I-75 like we've
done on the majority of Power Tour trips. I had the gas stops down to a science all the way to Chattanooga.
After the first gas stop, we hit Cracker Barrel for breakfast. This should be the only stop at a chain restaurant. From here on out, it's all one of a kind dining adventures. With a few limited exceptions, the "no chain restaurants on the Power Tour" rule has served us well.

Once we got back on the highway, we picked up a late model yellow Camaro who honked and gave us the thumb's up. He followed us to our next gas stop and we found out he was on his way to Charlotte for his first ever Power Tour, but was visiting friends in South Carolina first. He joined our modest 3-car group and stuck with us until we split off at I-26. We split with Russ a little further down the road and headed west to Asheville.


Y'all better get used to the "rear view" camera angle


For dinner, we stopped at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Taproom. I had heard it was a neat place and it certainly did not disappoint. The drive into the brewery is beautiful. It's lined with rock walls, has a wood bridge and is very tranquil. At the brewery itself, the Taproom is huge and there's a wide open back porch and patio. It was an ideal spot to have dinner, a beer, and walk around for a bit. Tara, of course, found the gardens in back and even spotted a type of butterfly she'd never seen before.



Beer, Glorious Beer!

 

It's called a Diana Fritillary (we looked it up). This one's a male, the females are black and blue and completely different.- [This concludes the nature portion of this blog entry...sort of]

We had managed to avoid ugly weather all of Thursday, but out luck ran out this morning. It was gray and rainy. Instead of trudging to the cars, the hotel shuttle took us to and from our breakfast spot. We ate at a restaurant called the Cornerstone. The food was great and freshly made in-house. My dad had the "build your own" omelet with extra Chorizo. It was the most expensive breakfast ever. His bill was over $1,000. Apparently, the first Chorizo is $0.50 and the second helping was $999.00.


Seems reasonable.

After getting the bill corrected, we went back to the hotel, loaded up the cars and drove into the mountains near Burnsville to visit family friends the Petersons. The weather cleared up and we spent some time catching up. Nick drove us up the road a bit and showed us a water fall right near the road that, had he not told us it was there, we would have missed it. There was a rope swing, but Tara stubbornly refused to demonstrate. Nick also mentioned the water was about 40 degrees.


A little more nature


Our planned gas stop in Burnsville didn't work out (the BP gas station's pumps were shut off and they had a small old pump with just 87 octane. We managed to make it back to the highway and a bigger gas station with high octane fuel. The Acadian will run on 87 octane (last year I found out it'll also run on part diesel), but my Corvette needs 93 octane.

We stopped for dinner at The Trailhead in Black Mountain, NC. The food was great. I had a jerk chicken sandwich with some of the best onion rings I've ever eaten. Tara pretended she was a healthy eater and ordered a grilled kale salad.

Our luck with the weather didn't hold and we drove most of the way from Black Mountain to the hotel in Concord in some pretty heavy rain.

 

Two hours of this...

When we finally got to the hotel, the parking lot was slammed. In addition to the Power Tour, there's a Republican Party meeting or convention going on. They have set up "hospitality" suites on many of the floors and everyone in the lobby, elevators, and in the halls had at least one drink in their hands. Now I know why they call them political parties.

We managed to find a spot under the hotel awning and right in front of our friend Lori's Monte Carlo. Tomorrow, we have to pick up our credentials and then on to the ZMax Raceway for Day 1.






All tucked in for the night.

 

From a previous nostalgia trip....the 2019 tour resumes at post #17...

HRPT 2014 - Concord (Charlotte), NC to Wisconsin Dells, WI (1563 miles)

June 6 - Orlando, FL to Charlotte (Concord), NC-- 541 miles
Finally, after a year of waiting and counting down days, it was time to leave for the 2014 Hot Rod Power Tour. Tara and I (in the Acadian) my parents (driving my Challenger) met up with our friends Ken and Kathy Lockwood and their '36 Ford Cabriolet at 6:00 a.m. at the Longwood I-4 rest area to begin the trek to Concord, NC.

The trip up was uneventful. We managed to miss a small rain shower that passed over Savannah and we had great weather the entire drive. It was cool enough in the morning that we didn't even need the A/C until South Carolina.

Sticking with our Power Tour Guru, Lori's rules (Rule #1: No chain restaurants), we made our lunch stop at Duke's BBQ in Orangeburg, SC. It was featured on the show "the best thing I ever ate." Contrary to its name, it was not really a barbecue place, but rather a low key southern cooking buffet. They had pitchers of sweet tea on the tables and the fried chicken was excellent!!
We arrived in Concord around 4. Amazingly, except for a '64 Malibu convertible that passed us in GA, we did not see any other Power Tour cars until we left the highway.

Once we were checked into the hotel, we threw some water on our faces, changed clothes and met up with the rest of our Florida crew to take advantage of the hotel's complimentary happy hour.
We had a few drinks, did some catching up, and then took the Hotel's shuttle vans over to Charlotte Motor Speedway where our 20 person group had a reservation for dinner at the Speedway Club. The Speedway Club is an exclusive restaurant with a spectacular view of the entire race track. The food was as good as the view.



After stuffing our faces (All You Can Eat prime rib and crab legs was the special), we shuttled back to the hotel and spent an hour or so checking out the cars in the hotel parking lot and meeting many new people who were taking advantage of the cool evening. Among the highlights in our parking lot was a 55 Chevy gasser (appropriately named BlaspHEMI due to its non-GM powerplant), our friend Fred's custom 56 Chevy, a gorgeous '57 Nomad, several Chevelle and GTO convertibles. There was even a '59 Convertible with a Kennedy/Johnson bumper sticker.

Saturday June 7th, the Tour officially begins at the ZMax Dragway.

Power Tour Day 1: Concord NC- 0 miles

Today officially started the Power Tour. Tara, Ken, Kathy, Jerry and Lisa got an early start wiping down and shining up the cars in the cool morning weather. We left the hotel and immediately knew we were on the Power Tour when we were in a mile long turn lane full of Hot Rods, classics, muscle and performance cars waiting to get into the ZMax Dragway.

Picking up our credentials and registration packets required a bit of creative parking because the registration lot was just a bit smaller than the number of cars that needed to register. Getting in and out was a real-life version of "Parking Mania."



Once we were registered, we got parked and started getting the full Power Tour experience. First things first, we got our credentials punched at the time clocks and walked the sponsors' midway and picked up all our free swag. Kathy was in slight shock as she quickly became loaded down with T-shirts, hats, coozies, bottles of Mothers Quick Detailer spray, and, of course, MSD's daily Power Tour magnets.

It's hard to explain the sensory overload that comes with seeking show cars in every direction as far as you can see. None of us could avoid drooling over a custom '69 white/blue Camaro with a LSA motor and the brightest white interior I have ever seen. Even the carpet was white. Tara, being Tara, took the time to check out every box Nova at the venue. They ranged from a virtually stock '66 that reminded her of her little 6 cylinder, to the supercharged black '67 we parked next to last year in Charlotte.

 

From a previous nostalgia trip....the 2019 tour resumes at post #17...

It never ceases to amaze me that with the hundreds, if not thousands of cars on the Power Tour, we usually manage to quickly run into friends from Florida-- Hollywood Howard and his green Monte Carlo, Richard and Lisa Spain in their Dart Sport, just to name a few. My aunt, uncle and cousin also made the trip over from Greensboro and were in awe of the experience.

Even though there was a good breeze, it was hot. So, after a few hours, some of us went to the hotel to relax poolside or in the A/C and others of us rolled down to Quaker Steak and Lube to quench our thirst and grab a quick snack before happy hour and our BBQ dinner at Jim 'n Nick's.

Dinner was great and we all over-ate. After dinner we spent a few hours tailgating in the hotel parking lot and enjoying the "mini" car show in the parking lot. Tara met 2 guys with a kinda original/kinda protouring '67 Nova on their first tour. They are going to run with us tomorrow.

Power Tour Day 2: Concord, NC to Knoxville, TN (233.3 miles)

Our morning started a bit early. 12:30 a.m. to be exact. That's when Tara's phone rang with someone wanting to buy our Acadian for Sale. Apparently, Tim and Lori put a "for sale" sign on the Acadian as a little payback for Tara writing "Mopar or No Car" on Tim and Lori's Bowtie Barn mirror last Christmas. Too funny.

Once the sun came up, we rounded up our caravan and hit the road for Knoxville. On the way out of Concord, the NC State troopers set up a speed trap and got a few of the heavier footed drivers.
Once we were out of Concord, the route was another of my favorite types of Power Tour Routes- two-lane winding and twisting mountain roads. I kept hot on the heels of a 2014 Stingray and even closed the distance with him on a couple tight turns. I was about to pat myself on the back for my great driving, until I realized a pickup truck was slowing the Vette down. Check out the snapshot of part of the route with the rest of the pictures in the albums section.

As usual, every town we went through had people sitting on the side of the road waving and taking pictures of as the Power Tour cars rumbled by. Some even held cardboard signs asking for burnouts. From the marks on the pavement, more than a few people answered the request.

Tara had us all pull over at the Flowering Bridge in Lake Lure, NC which was very scenic. It was made more scenic with the V8 powered monster cars rumbling down the road behind it.
Next, we drove up to the entrance of Chimney Rock State Park, but passed on visiting the place

because the elevator was out of order, plus we were all getting pretty hungry. Tara hit up the Yelp app on the phone and found a place called "The Local Joint" it was a restaurant featuring fresh local food. It was also attached to a gas station. The food was excellent and we were able to fill the tanks as well as our bellies.