We stayed at Lake Haven Retreat for four nights. The campground wasn’t anything special and there was construction and congestion between the campground and the interstate, which was kind of a pain, but it served its purpose.
We went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum on our first full day there. The museum is inside of the racetrack, so after we were able to watch the cars practicing for the Grand Prix. They were so LOUD! We paid extra to get the guided tour of the museum, which was nice. Neither Randy nor I knew much about the cars or racing history, so it was nice to have someone explain things to us. Besides all the old cars, there was a theater and lots of videos playing to show us some of the historical moments in racing. I had no idea how huge the Indianapolis 500 event was, with over 400,000 people showing up for it! We were there for the Grand Prix, also known as “The Road Race”, which was on a track with 14 turns, inside of the 2.5 mile oval track that the 500 is run on. Randy was able to recognize a lot of the names of the racers, but I only recognized a few. After the tour, we drove around the area a bit, to figure out where we’d park the next day for the Grand Prix Qualifications. (We decided to get the general admission tickets on Qualification day, instead of a particular seat on the day of the real race, since we didn’t figure we knew enough to care about the real race.)
I knew I’d enjoy the new experience of going to the speedway, but I was surprised at how interesting it really was. It wasn’t very crowded at all, so we were able to park in an infield lot. We spent most of the day there and walked around a good bit, sitting in the stands at the start line and on spectator mounds at various turns. We also watched the cars being towed off the track and into their garages, which was cool. Besides the practices and qualifications, there were a couple of races for the lower level competitions which were fun to watch. There were even a couple of crashes, but we only saw them on the big screens.
When we had looked at the forecast the day before, there had been a chance of rain most of the day. Then morning of, the rain might start around 2pm. Turns out, it didn’t start until 4pm, and it was only a drizzle for about 5-10 minutes. Long enough for them to force all the cars to change tires, though. We put our rain jackets on and started walking back closer to the truck in case it got worse, but it stopped instead. Yay! So, we had a great introduction to the racing world! I think I probably enjoyed that a lot more than I would have with 400,000 other people being there with me; but perhaps I’ll add the Indianapolis 500 to my bucket list, just in case they all know something I don’t!
On a totally separate topic, Randy happened to be reading an email from Focus on the Family and noticed an interview with some friends we knew when we lived in Ashburn, VA — Jon & Dawn. We had not seen, or even talked to them, for about 18 years, but when Randy saw they now lived in Indianapolis, he sent them an email to let them know we were in the area. I thought Jon’s reply was cute, starting off with “Duuuuuude!” 🙂 Fortunately, they were free to meet us for lunch one day at Rick’s Cafe Boatyard and we had a blast catching up with them! I was surprised at how many faces came back to me as we all tried to remember names of people we used to hang out with together. (Of course, the faces are no longer accurate after all this time, but still…)
What was even more fun was that when another long lost friend, Jim, saw we were at the IMS, he mentioned he was coming through Indianapolis the next day and staying at Lake Haven Retreat. So, Randy replied, “Duuuuuude!”, haha, and let him know we were already there. What was even MORE fun was the fact that Jim was in Ashburn the same time we were and is good friends with Jon and Dawn. So, we all ended up getting together for dinner at Mesh the same evening that we had lunch with Jon & Dawn.
So, to sum up our day on Saturday — met Jon & Dawn for an early lunch at 11am and visited for several hours; got back to the RV park around 2:30; around 3:30pm, Jim texted that he and his wife, Miriam, were there and invited us over; visited for a couple of hours then got ready to go to dinner; around 5:45pm, we picked them up and met Jon & Dawn for dinner; visited for several hours and got home around 9:30pm. What a fun-filled day!! (Both restaurants were superb, btw! A bit pricey but the food, service and atmosphere were exceptional, so I’d say it was worth it.) I’m bummed we didn’t get a pic of all of us together, but here’s one of us hanging out with Jon & Dawn.
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